After that sharply tumble into the plastic spiral pack, Bogdan had few moments when 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 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. Perhaps that he died and just then, when he connected somehow with his body, he took in consideration this variant and brought it on a higher level of probability. Maybe that all which happened to him in the last time and seemed to be so weird were just some events experienced by the ghost of a freshly dead individual. Concreteness of all strange, extremely strange events, which occurred in his life during the previous days or - maybe that would be more accurate said - concreteness belonging to the events which he witnessed, who went through the front of the retina of his mind giving to him the appearance of a physical reality led him in the field of mistakes and only now, when he finally succeeded to come back in yet his former body, he understood what really happened with him.
He understood the truth for the simple reason that his own body became just a carcase and it was no more able to send to him informations through senses. In which regards the notorious light from the end of the tunnel, he must confess that nothing like that was showed to him. Anyway, it passed enough time that this moment of after-life grace, this supposed moment of Godhood, which is assumed to be next to the time of death, to be lost for good. The mind or the spirit, or what would be in fact this mental software which was used by him for putting all these questions and which helped him for relating with the world while he was alive and after that, 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 spreading on the soil together with pieces of meat and bones. Pain, oh, pain, but what happened then to him?
Only now, when he returned in what could be called his former house, he remembered about these things. He haunted bewildered through the city where he lived and he didn’t think, not even for a second, to all these things which were imprinted with bloody letters, his whole body being a necrotic stigma of those events.
Probably that just because of this reason he didn’t remember what happened with his body, with his being. It seems that was a terrible shock, and in the front of such a suffering, so dreadful and complete in its hellish nature, the pure light itself had denied to be shown to him. Or, at least, he didn’t have enough strength or enough 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 even stranger to the body which it was no more. Since his body didn’t belong to him anymore, loosing 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 didn’t see nothing alike with the poetical twilight from Bardo, the astral realm, about which talked Buddhist sutras or writings, but only 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 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 carcase made from flesh which became bloody and sweaty, and which didn’t succeed to dry its secretions and its wounds because 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 was reached the decomposition of the body which still was alive. Then.
The impression was enough powerful to impose him not to think anymore about these events. Immediately, the river of memories was stopped and the unpleasant memories ceased to flow on his mental screen. 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 validity beyond life?
Taking account in our inference to the fact that the conscience itself is defined and understood as being a function of the body, therefore, that it belongs to the matter - or that the conscience is nothing more than an epi-phenomenon, physical, of course, as all phenomena - then how could be explained, in these aforementioned conditions, the action of seizure through repression which has been done by mind, as long as him, Bogdan Ermes, was nothing more than mind or something alike? How was possible that a pure mind or a pure reason, disembodied, to function as a mind-body aggregate? It was a thinking subject which could be labeled that being metaphysical using a capital letter, was a true seminar of applied metaphysics, even one of self-referential metaphysics, where the subject and the object of metaphysical reflection are the same, just that Bogdan had no longer his usual opening for this kind of subjects. Not then and there. Not outside of the university frame, not outside to all space-time frames.
Maybe that certain things shouldn’t be thought or said, even less to be done. He felt now more still, standing again in the middle of his darkness. A silent and featureless darkness, but which 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 it was the most terrible movie-show which the kinetic of his mind had watched until now. Thus, he chosen 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 have said Frank Herbert, then at least here, in this bridge beyond physical realm, he could be safe. Besides, the non-space where he was didn’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 beautiful, at something able to distract him as long as possible from that ludicrous inner movie which was developed between his metaphysical neurons until few minutes ago. How 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 never stopped 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 much 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 will come, requesting payment for his knowledge or maybe only 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 had seen that girl, about 25 years old. Or maybe that was rude from his part to appreciate her age thus, so exactly and though so approximative! He had looked to her, but she didn’t seem to notice the sweet eyes thrown by Bogdan to her, and after a few seconds the young woman went quickly in the opposite direction. Of course that he didn’t succeed to express his delight while he was too busy looking to that girl, which seemed detached from a super-realistic frame. Once the girl had disappeared from his view, Bogdan begun to feel very bad, becoming dizzy, despite the fact that he had continued to go ahead, as a machine. Thoughts and perceptions became unclear and misty in his mind, loosing the contact with his own body, with outgoing silhouette of that girl, with sidewalk, with noises of the street. He even didn’t know when and how he had arrived in front of the flat in which he had lived. Barely then he woke up. But this happened before Bogdan had realized that he had died. Was the time, the most recent period from his life-non-life, when 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 have had to dive in himself, in his forgotten earthly carcase, thus achieving the conscience of… death.
Probably that while he haunted on the streets of Bucharest, going to the psychotherapy 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 supposed to lead him again to the IMM, well, in all these moments, he, Bogdan Hermes, was nothing more or less than a simple ghost or something like that. Quoting from 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 produced in Univers, and which was scheduled 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 noumena, the world of the things-in-themselves, the meta-cosmic and meta-temporal dimension of the things-in-themselves, located 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 the after-life conditions of a suicide or of the individuals which had done immoral deeds, of the individuals which had removed the divine truth from their souls through their inhuman actions. Some people had said that noetic waste, or spirits, 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 doesn’t and couldn’t do anything else than to think about their anti- and pseudo-divine deeds, deeds which destroyed something which wasn’t made by them and neither was theirs, which annihilated a divine property, sending to death a human body.
Also, in the movie Twin Peaks he contemplated a metaphor of this non-space, a true niche of transcendence with valves in existence, where for those blocked there was reserved a wailing subsistence for an undefined period of time. A place where the laws of space aren’t respected anymore and the time itself flows in a different manner, in each direction and more quickly, but enough slowly to soak with pain every pore of your soul. Maybe even the pain of the deeds which you didn’t make, but which had been assumed by you and for which you had been putted to pay. Or maybe that you did a mistake daring to open that gate of Hell, in the same way in which had done the good man Dale Cooper, for example, that one for which the angel keeps praying.
But him, Bogdan Hermes, what guilt could have him, what kind of sins did possible this experience for him that to be constrained to live in this reign of existence?
He know that nothing from what happens in the world isn’t a non-sense, and he also know that nothing from which he had done while he was alive, while he was a human, wasn't unforgivable. At least, he didn't do any grave enough mistake 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 was just literature, and even one by the best quality, one which gave reference to the main qualities of human being, one which exposes you, as reader, to the forks of mimesis and catharsis.
He thinks again at that moment, which even now it seems to him as being so odd, the episode of meeting that girl on boulevard, in the heart of the day, in a neighbourhood full of meanings, meanings belonging both to his personal history and to the history of the country where, for a while, he lived. He had never seen her until then, but he knew that, somehow, would have been possible to meet each other, even that they should had to be together. As an astral signature or karmic bond kept them together. Bogdan felt that this girl was close to him in a spiritual way, and that this girl is more alike with him than most of the people which he had knew in his short life, so close to him that common memories, mutual knowing under the temporary pretext of life had 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 what 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 what it was shown to his senses in present is the picture from now, constantly moving, of that piece belonging to the space-time puzzle. A metamorphosis in pictures, having the gift to express the dynamic nature of the world. He just know it. He felt in the depth of his being that he sees that place as it looks now. How? This neither him wasn’t able to answer for himself. Maybe thanks to the power of the disembodied mind, maybe 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 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 a Paradise expecting for him, he wouldn’t succeed to master the deep regret that appeared in his mind. He cried with ecto-plasma tears, or maybe that he cried with tachyonic tears. But it was a state more profound that the most noisy crying from his life time. Wasn’t a crying or a wailing able to wash the retina of his eyes, to clean his sinuses, to burn the ballast of his negative feelings, but 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 didn’t know how much it was metaphor and how much it was experience from what 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 would go where he would have to go immediately after the bounds of his young body were wildly cutted. The undertaker-shop was gone, the whole neighbourhood looked different, but it was obvious that that 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 didn’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 latter had became meaningless. “Maybe this should had to be my destiny, and because I died earlier, I didn’t succeed to fulfill it, maybe even in its essential parts!” thinks Bogdan. “Love is the most important thing, Bogdane!” didn't bother to tell him, Lavinia, the psychotherapist, during their sessions. “This is another reason for which are accepted and practiced so many types of psychotherapy, including therapy through faith, which doesn’t belong to us, psychotherapists, but which is a therapy as any other, having the alternate name of fido-terapy. How otherwise could you explain so called cases of demonic possession, you, as modern and cosmopolitan citizen of this century? Do you believe that those individuals are really mastered by psychic forces from outside of their bodies and which are beyond their control? No way, they have a deficiency in area of love, Bogdane! Our suffering, our pain, including the Buddhist sense of the word for it, is caused by love, by its 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 didn't make a mistake regarding thins thing, which otherwise she had guessed from the first place, before she had discovered Eastern metaphysics, and which was known by her probably since she was only a child.
But only now he succeed to feel and understand this fundamental truth. In his life Bogdan needed love, as anyone else after all, but the magnetic power of destiny drew him here, working as a spring. At least now he knows that all these had to happen. If love is the main power from Univers, which can heal everything, then without any question love had drawn him here, even after death, to show him what had to happen in his life, how his life had to look in a fulfilled form. Thinking at this subject he felt how really become lighter, more lighter, as something would emptied him of his content, this of course just for the case where disembodied souls could be considered as being owners of any content, even of an immaterial one. Only now he understood the meaning of the power of love, so praised by the various 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 grew, the urban picture became darker, the shapes and colors became evanescent, becoming at the first moment more fluid, more intertwined, as in a super-natural kaleidoscope. After that, those shapes and colours merged together producing an amorphous mass of opaque substance which should had to be lost in the dark. When he thought that the movie was broken again, 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 beyond the fissure, he saw the windows of a flower-shop. The flower-shop, he just knew this - as he also had known, when he was projected by the power of his own thoughts in the place where he met or he had to met on that boy, having no more than 25 years old - that there was the place wherefrom his after-life will continue, as he had known that the flower-shop took the place of the undertaker-shop. He saw bouquets of flowers, including the magnificent China roses, which were so loved by him, flowers next to flowers, bouquets over other bouquets, multicolor, white, yellow or red, orange or violet, shades and main colours, wrapped in plastic or kept in vases filled with water. There were also crowns, were even flowers for weddings or baptisms, the imperial lilies and roses with rainbow shades, flowers extremely different and beautiful in the same time, each of them being unique in their species, as some angels of the vegetal reign. He almost was able to touch them, he almost felt their smell, he almost succeeded to enjoy the miracle of their existences.
Quoting a philosopher, neither him didn't know 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, the shades and the colors became more and more unclear, the 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 happen. The vortex re-created in space-time will be reabsorbed, willing maybe to desecrate the magical gate which was opened until now. To desecrate it closing it.
Or maybe that, in fact, the 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 to 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 from behind or from beyond of the world? Maybe that is the counterpart for a few hours, for some days, or maybe for entire years! Anyway, the events happened with a super-natural speed. Therefore, as I said, even this last bond of him with ordinary space and time was erased by the jagged pen belonging to the scribe of fates. Immediately after the gate was closed, a powerful light, irresistible, wrapped him in his whole being, coming from inside, from himself, as would had been always there, just waiting for the proper moment to be discovered and used. Bogdan became one with the light and begun 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 his feelings, beyond his intuition. Then he knew that another chance 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.
