Knowing (36 page)

“Damn, Jane. You think he set it?”

She nervously checked out the surrounding area, recalling the ominous sight of Rudy calmly standing by his sedan as the
Anubus
blew up and watching the aftermath. “No, I don’t.” She checked her side mirror and spun the van around, blazing down the highway in the opposite direction.

“What does this mean, Jane?” Harlan asked nervously.

She stared straight ahead, silent.

“
Jane
! What’s going on?” he said again with more firmness.

“I think they might be onto us.”

“The cops?”

“No! Romulus!”

She drove like a demon, heading southwest. Harlan hung on for dear life.

“Jane! Slow it down, would you? We don’t to attract unwanted attention.”

Jane let up on the gas and slowed down to the speed limit. “He knew it was going to happen, Harlan. Remember? He kept saying he was so hot? He even said he felt like he was on fire.”
What in the hell was that
, she thought. Precognitive sensations? Feeling the future before it happens? As much as Monroe did in his short life, he didn’t deserve this kind of death. The poor guy probably only had nineteen or twenty years of somewhat normalcy before he got sucked into Romulus and destroyed forever. He’d been discarded because he was another liability. He was taken out in the same measured manner as when you set a mousetrap and then dispose of the dead mouse while you’re chatting on the phone. It’s a great approach unless you are the mouse and you trip that trap. Jane said a quiet prayer, asking God to watch over him. She drove for another two hours, staying off the main road.

Arriving back in the heart of the Sangre de Cristo mountain range, Jane turned onto none other than Highway 17 and headed north. Twenty miles later, she found a vacant rest area that had access to free Wi-Fi. Since they had the parking lot to themselves, Harlan got out of the van to stretch his legs and use the public restroom. Jane paced around the grassy islands, still shaking internally from the events of the past few hours. Instead of cogitating on the breathtaking experience between Harlan and Marion, Jane had to put that aside as thoughts of their safety moved to the forefront. Harlan came out of the bathroom and headed back into the van, keeping the side door open. He lay back, flipping through one of the
Q
magazines before drifting off to sleep.

As his snoring hit levels that could shatter glass, Jane scooped up her laptop and leather satchel, grabbed some lunchmeat and cheese and crossed to one of the nearby grassy islands. Seated under a tree, she typed “Ajna” into the search field. Choosing the first link, she read that, “According to the Hindu tradition, the Ajna is the sixth chakra. It is positioned in the brain, directly behind the eyebrow center and known as ‘the mind’s eye.’ Its activation site is at the eyebrow region, in the position of the ‘third eye’.” Scrolling down, Jane continued to read. “Ajna is also known as the ‘eye of intuition.’ But it is much more than that. It is considered the bridge between the various spiritual worlds as well as the point that, when activated, can link two people and allow them to communicate, no matter the distance.” A quote at the bottom of the page read: “He who masters the power of the Ajna, masters his life through clarity of sight. He who masters clarity of sight, holds more power than all the riches of the world combined.”

After grabbing a few pieces of meat and a slice of cheese, she brought out the greeting card with the Pharaoh picture on it. She typed in the quote at the bottom of the card and found that it was actually only a partial quote of a larger one: “The light of the body is the eye: if therefore thine eye be single, thy whole body shall be full of light. But if thine eye be evil, thy whole body shall be full of darkness. If therefore the light that is in thee be darkness, how great is that darkness!”

Thine eye be single
, Jane focused on. She thought about the lapis stone with the single Eye of Horus. But to Jane, Ajnas and chakras were spiritual concepts with nothing physical to support their existence. She certainly didn’t deny the power of intuition because she’d used it far too many times on the job. If there was something physical that was connected to this ethereal belief, it would lend more credibility to the idea. Without giving it any thought, she did a search for the “Physical third eye.”

Strangely enough, there
was
a physical third eye and it was called the pineal gland. Jane clicked on the first link and sat back. At the top of the page, was a subsection of the brain, illustrating the location of the reddish-gray gland. The size of a pea, the pineal sits in the center of the brain between the two hemispheres. It’s an endocrine gland responsible for melatonin production—the hormone that regulates sleep/wake cycles—and is recharged by sunlight. As important as that function is, the spiritual implications associated with the pineal gland were much more intriguing.

Jane scrolled down the page and took in a quick breath. “The word
pineal
comes from the word
pinea
, which means pinecone.” And there was a photo of a perfect pinecone to drive home the visual shock.

The pinecone was apparently the “hidden symbol” that represented the pineal gland. Suddenly, it was starting to make strange sense. Monroe was right. Gabe was being redundant with the pinecone, pine nuts, the book and the Eye of Horus lapis but she couldn’t make a pineal connection between the sandalwood oil and the Patsy Cline tape. A quick check discovered that sandalwood oil is rubbed on the “third eye” to activate intuition. That left only the odd cassette tape with the highlighted song, “If I Could See the World Through the Eyes of Child.” She recalled how Monroe first set the tape to the side and then reconsidered. That told her that it might not be directly connected with the pineal but it was linked in some manner.

Reading further, Jane learned that esoteric and “mystery” schools throughout history venerated this tiny but powerful gland, calling it “the seat of the soul” and “the eye of God.” Philosophers and students of mysticism waxed poetically about it. Plato stated in
The Republic
(Book 7) “the soul…has an organ purified and enlightened, an organ better worth saving than ten thousand corporeal eyes, since truth becomes visible through this alone.” Rene Descartes taught that we had a body and a soul and that the soul functioned in “the innermost part of the brain.” The pineal gland appears in the human embryo around forty-nine days of gestation. This was the exact number of days the Tibetans believed was required for one’s soul to incarnate into their next body. Jane discovered another pineal reference in the Bible that was startling. While open to interpretation, in Genesis 32:30, there was the line, “And Jacob called the name of the place
Peniel
: for I have seen God face to face, and my life is preserved.”

Jane learned more information from a website that featured chapters from an Indian spiritual book. When one spiritually “awakened” the pineal gland, it was thought to bring about mastery over the mundane life, elevating one into a realm that few people know exists. Reading further, it sounded like a club with a handful of members who had the ability to see what others could not, to delve into the cosmos with precision and return with higher knowledge that could change the course of human history. Maintaining activation of the pineal, Jane learned, is thought to confer “eternal youthfulness” since it works in harmony with the hypothalamus and our biological clock that helps determine the aging process. On the bottom of the website page, there was a quote from “The Sleeping Prophet,” Edgar Cayce that caught Jane’s attention. “Keep the pineal gland operating and you won’t grow old — you will always be young.”

And it appeared that youth had the advantage when it came to this mysterious gland. Up until of the age of six, it was believed that the pineal functioned without interference, allowing a child to “see” and know things that others could not. But something strange happened at the age of six. The gland began to calcify, growing a crust around it that eventually blocked its function completely. Thus, after age six, the silver cord between the worlds was cut with no access to one’s spiritual source. However, Jane read, “There were those who were able to keep the pineal operating after age six and well into their older years through deep meditation. These rare people were known as Masters of their Destiny.”

Jane learned that, during meditation, their trigger mechanism for pineal activation was a piercing point of blue/indigo light that often physically appeared as a single illumined dot in one’s line of sight. Known by some as “the blue pearl,” seeing it was acknowledgment that the pineal had been “turned on.” Jane suddenly made the startling connection between what Harlan called the “blue light special” that he experienced before he scribbled in his notebook. And yes, she saw that same point of blue light when she held Harlan’s hand that night. It was overwhelming to her—to have this otherworldly experience
first
and then read later about a specific element she’d seen in that vision. The confirmation was staggering. As much as she’d tried her best to push away the incredulous nature of this case, there was always a part of her that needed verification that what she was feeling and seeing was genuine and not some delayed flashback from her youth or a lingering side effect of PTSD.

She continued to locate page after page of information on the pineal gland. This “bridge between the worlds,” was apparently a major player at the time of death. The theory was that upon death or in near-death experiences, the pineal gland excreted a huge amount of a chemical known as
Dimethyltryptamine
or DMT. Some scientists who studied DMT theorized that it was responsible for the blast of blinding light that people mention who have died and come back to life. Within that light, one progressive theologian wrote, was “the light of God” and the ability to become one with “the source.” To travel into that rarified sphere and commune with the angels was the gift everyone received upon their exit from this life.

But the light wasn’t an idea born out of someone’s imagination. Information had been collected from hundreds of people who had been clinically dead. Many of them reported seeing an enormous flash of bright white light upon the tremor of death. But none of them feared it. In fact, they bathed in it and even mentioned a “loving voice” that communicated with them without words. When asked how they conversed, the answer was always the same: “With my mind’s eye.”

Another article postulated that when a person has a near death experience brought on by a terrorizing act, such as an attempted murder, the blast of DMT into the pineal gland is overpowering. It was, Jane figured, as if the terror that preceded it needed to be cushioned and blanketed to absorb the shock when the soul re-entered the body. Whatever the source or trigger, it was clear to Jane that DMT was a powerful chemical that the pineal gland was programmed to consistently produce on cue.

Finishing the meat and cheese, she sat back, scanning the desolate highway. From what she could ascertain, three themes were at work: death, connection with “a God source” and regeneration. But there seemed to be a concerted effort to keep this information out of the mainstream. There certainly wasn’t a lot of media coverage about this pea-sized gland, where the masses were alerted to its potential power. Except for exploitive entertainment that is easily dismissed, there were no talk shows that seriously discussed how to harness one’s intuitive talents, activate the mind’s eye or how to project oneself into five dimensional reality. That kind of instruction was left to the Saturday evening soirees or “salons” where men with jeweled turbans lead small groups through meditations. But for most of this world, it was a well-kept secret. And she understood why that had to be. As Monroe so deftly said, “Ancient knowledge is sacred and only those who have the understanding or the ability to convert the knowledge into substance are allowed to discuss it and teach it.” That was followed up by his remark that you don’t waste your time on those who can’t begin to comprehend the complexities and profound possibilities. It was casting “pearls before swine.” She realized he was probably talking about the manner in which Romulus looked at the populace. Glaring down at us from their gilded palace, Jane envisioned them separating the cream from everyone’s jar, leaving a watery, opaque film that never satisfied. If we were to them as Monroe suggested—just links in a chain that were easily manipulated, molded and controlled—it made sense that this kind of secreted wisdom was removed from the mainstream consciousness. Furthermore, Jane surmised that to release that kind of knowledge on a grand scale could easily compromise Romulus’ agendas. As she’d been told, they hated spontaneity. And a populace that was awakened and aware of their vast individual potential was not an asset. To Romulus, it was the greatest danger they could ever imagine.

Jane returned to her computer and continued to research the pineal gland. But when she searched for images, she was staggered by what she found. There seemed to be an oddly frequent addition of a pinecone motif within sacred or religious settings that spanned the centuries. A staff of the Egyptian sun god Osiris had two “kundalini serpents” that entwine and face a pinecone at the top. The Greek God Dionysus is also depicted carrying a staff with a pinecone at the tip. Many Roman Catholic architectural designs, especially in sacred settings, incorporated a pinecone in their motif. The Pope carries a staff with a pinecone directly above where his hand is positioned. And if that isn’t enough, the largest pinecone sculpture in the world is featured in Vatican Square in where else but the “Court of the Pinecone.” Researching further, pinecone images had been featured for centuries in rugs, clay pots, paintings and other artistic pieces in ways that suggested the artist placed it there
deliberately
to symbolize the pinnacle of wisdom. For anyone “in the know” who understood the spiritual code, the recognition of the symbol was always a quiet reminder of their secret knowledge. Power had to be contained in order for it to be controlled by a few. And in case any of them forgot, there was a language of visual reminders that harkened back to the knowledge they so desperately guarded. He who held the key to the ultimate knowledge of our universe would triumph beyond everyone else. And through that triumph, immortality would be guaranteed through the bloodline that protected their secrets.