The Secret of the Missing Dimensions
I now knew what the secret of the missing dimensions was! Master Fwap and the Oracle were congratulating me on my having discovered it. Now it was simply a matter of trekking back through the beautiful Annapurna Himalayas, meeting a world-class German snowboarder, and studying the advanced Tantric texts with Master Fwap and the Oracle. ‘No problemo,’ I thought to myself. Then I woke up.
I was lying on the cold cave floor. The fire had gone out, and I could vaguely see the interior of the cave as the first light of morning filtered in through the cave’s mouth.
My body was covered with several rough woolen blankets; evidently Master Fwap or the Oracle had placed them over me, after I had fallen asleep the evening before.
It was only a dream! I hadn’t solved the riddle yet, and I didn’t know if I would be able to. ‘Nice dream,’ I sarcastically thought to myself. Before I could think any further, Master Fwap and the Oracle came walking into the cave.
“Still sleeping?” inquired the Oracle. “Do all Americans sleep as much as you do?”
I assumed his question was rhetorical, so I didn’t bother to answer it.
“Time to get up and take a crack at the riddle,” Master Fwap stated in a matter-of-fact tone of voice. “It is much easier for us to open up the dimensions for you at sunrise, sunset, or late in the evening. Since you are well rested now, and you may be tired by this evening, let’s get started. You’ll need all of the energy you can possibly muster to solve the riddle and discover the secret of the missing dimensions today.”
I got up and stretched. There was no need to get dressed since I had fallen asleep in my clothes. While Master Fwap started a fire and the Oracle began walking around the cave shouting “Phat!” I ducked outside for a few minutes, and after taking care of nature’s morning call, I washed my hands and face thoroughly with some of the new powder that had fallen the night before.
The iciness of the snow upon my face awakened me immediately. I returned to the cave and sat down in front of the fire to warm myself. Master Fwap served himself and me some tea, while the Oracle continued to walk around the cave shouting “Phat!”
After a while the Oracle stopped shouting the mantra and joined us. As usual, he sat on my left side while Master Fwap sat on my right. Master Fwap poured and handed the Oracle a cup of tea, which the Oracle proceeded to sip very loudly.
When we had all finished our tea, Master Fwap spoke: “Meditate with us, and the rest will follow.”
“That’s it, Master Fwap? No other instructions?” I asked with amazement. In the back of my mind, I had assumed he was going to give me one of his long preliminary talks, as he usually did before he asked me to try a new type of Buddhist practice.
“That is all, just meditate,” he said.
“If I were you, I would listen to Fwap,” the Oracle remarked offhandedly.
“Okay,” I replied. For some reason it seemed to me there should have been more of a ceremony involved, or that I should have had something eloquent to say to them, but “Okay” was all I could come up with at the time.
I closed my eyes and started the “Blue Sky” visualization. After picturing the blue sky for a few minutes, I began to see a lot of different reds, greens, yellows, blues, and a particular shade of turquoise I had never seen before, swirling around me.
Then I saw the white puffy circles of light I had passed through the day before. But I didn’t feel as if I was in my astral body, and I couldn’t manage to move toward the circles of light.
They, however, moved toward me. One circle of light after another passed around me. They looked like phosphorescent circles that were made up of light and fluffy cumulus clouds.
I felt timeless again. The circles of light unexpectedly disappeared, and I found myself sitting in what appeared to be Master Fwap’s meditation room at his monastery in Kathmandu. Master Fwap was sitting on my right, and the Oracle was sitting on my left.
I looked from one to the other. They both had the biggest smiles on their faces I had ever seen.
“The American boy has done it, Fwap. Phat!” shouted out the Oracle with joy.
“Yes, I must admit, I didn’t think he had it in him,” Master Fwap calmly remarked. “But my own master, Fwaz-Shastra Dup, had foreseen that he would solve the riddle. As usual, my root guru was correct.”
“Okay, Master Fwap, but what about the riddle, when do I get to that part? And, if you don’t mind my asking, I thought you said that you and the Oracle weren’t going to come into any of these astral dimensions with me?”
“You’ve already solved the riddle!” the Oracle shouted.
“The Oracle’s correct,” Master Fwap calmly responded. “You’ve done it.”
“But what are you guys doing here in the dimensions with me? Did you come in just to tell me that I’ve done it?”
“We are not in the dimensions with you,” Master Fwap said in a soft and even tone of voice, as if he were explaining something complicated to a small child. “We are in the here and now, at my temple in Kathmandu.”
“Wait a minute, Master Fwap. Aren’t our bodies still back in the cave of enlightenment, in the Annapurna Himalayas?”
“No,” Master Fwap replied, shaking his head gently from side to side.
“Master Fwap and Master Oracle, are you trying to tell me that we teleported our bodies all the way from the cave of enlightenment back here to Kathmandu?”
“Precisely,” replied the Oracle, with a tone of proud achievement in his voice.
“But this can’t be real. I mean, I don’t even know how I did it!”
“You will never know,” Master Fwap proceeded to explain. “Your second attention did it, as did ours.”
“Master Fwap, I am seriously speechless. Was that the answer to the riddle, being able to teleport back here?” I asked with incredulity.
“Evidently,” the Oracle replied, in a flat and suddenly bored tone of voice.
“Listen, my young friend,” the Oracle continued. “What your second attention did just now wasn’t a very big deal from our point of view. We did something a little more difficult, didn’t we, Fwap?”
“We did, indeed,” Master Fwap replied, “although, honored Oracle, you must admit it was relatively easy compared to what our own masters made us do when we were his age, in order to regain our past-life enlightenments.”
“Yes,” the Oracle sighed, as a far-away look filtered across his eyes, as if he was remembering something from a long-forgotten past.
“Excuse me, but would either of you please tell me what you did that was so hard?” I had to ask, the suspense was starting to get to me.
‘‘Why, we brought back your snowboard and knapsack with us,” replied the Oracle. “See, they are lying right behind you, just turn around and have a look for yourself.”
I turned my head around and there they were; both my snowboard and my knapsack were lying on the floor behind me.
“It was harder to bring them back than you might suppose,” the Oracle remarked as an afterthought. “But we didn’t want you to lose your precious snowboard. You’ll need it to take lessons on from your new German friend.”
Master Fwap then cracked up completely. Then the Oracle joined him. The two of them laughed and laughed until tears covered their entire faces. Eventually their laughter subsided.
“Well, now what do I do?” I asked in a totally dumbfounded voice.
“I suggest you return to the hostel for a few days and begin to read the third section of The Handbook for Enlightenment. In the meantime, take a few snowboarding lessons from your new German friend, and when you feel the time is correct, you can bring her over and introduce her to us,” replied Master Fwap.
“We’ll be here when you two arrive,” the Oracle said with a smile.
I stood up, picked up my snowboard and knapsack, bowed to Master Fwap and the Oracle, and walked down the dark temple corridor and out of the front door, into the stark, bright Kathmandu morning sunlight.
Walking down the steps from Master Fwap’s temple, somehow I just knew that I was at the beginning of what was going to prove to be a very special day.