“Non-violence and peaceful resistance became our weapons in the struggle against the British for India’s freedom. Of course, it was not as simple as that—oh no! In Punjab, the Jallianwala Bagh massacre of civilians by British troops caused deep trauma to our nation, leading to increased public anger and acts of violence. I criticized both the actions of the British Raj and the retaliatory violence of Indians. I authored a sweeping resolution offering condolences to British civilian victims and condemning the riots that, after initial opposition in the party, was accepted following my speech advocating the principle that all violence was evil and could not be justified. But it was after the massacre and subsequent violence that I began to focus on obtaining complete self-government and control of all Indian government institutions as well as individual, spiritual and political independence.”
Gandhi puts his arm around my shoulder (it feels light as a feather) and slowly, tenderly leads me outside into the ashram’s peaceful garden. Golden sunlight filters through the leafy branches of a eucalyptus tree, and the warmth of the rays caresses my skin. I must admit that I am feeling overwhelmed in the mahatma’s presence; he has given me a great deal to think about. Surely each person is influenced by the times in which he lives, and my own destiny—humble though it certainly will be—must also be influenced by the events and circumstances that unfold and govern the issues of the day. Just how I choose to respond to those issues—ethical, political, ecological, economic—will rightly determine my moral rank in society’s hierarchy. Will I define those issues clearly, without bias? Or will I be subject to lies and deflection and manipulation and propaganda? Will I uphold fundamental principles, or will I shirk my responsibility out of fear or convenience? Will I stand up not only for myself, but also for the rights of all mankind? Will I have the courage of my convictions? Will I exercise the ability to choose that my Creator gave me? For when all is said and done, perhaps that is the only (religious) question that really matters.
With the help and guidance of biblical scholar Matthew Taylor, I plunge headlong into the virtual world of the ancient Torah. At the foot of the Wailing Wall in virtual Jerusalem, Matthew greets me and asks, “Are you sure you’re ready for this, Fizzy?”
What Matthew is referring to is a journey to experience firsthand the events of the Old Testament. “I have to admit,” I tell him, “I have a taste for the miraculous. And I’ve always wondered about the phenomenal stories in the Bible.”
Matthew assures me that I will know a new truth about these matters after the VL retro-experience he has arranged for me, because I am to accompany the Israelites on their march into the desert.
OMG! Literally…
One click and I am suddenly inside a humble house made of clay bricks and dried mud. The house is located in the City of Kafr ed-Dawar, where the Jewish slave population is one hundred and twenty thousand. I am with a woman named Deborah, and her daughter Miriam. A rabbi has told us to eat only unleavened bread, and we must drink lots of water, too. We eat by the light of an oil lamp, and our shadows, cast ominously upon rough and colorless stucco, loom large as they foreshadow the exodus that will begin after midnight. Our conversation is conducted in breathless whispers: in the wake of nine deadly plagues that have ravaged the land (the Plague of Blood, the Plague of Frogs, the Plague of Lice, the Plague of Flies, the Plague of Livestock Deaths, the Plague of Boils, the Plague of Hail, the Plague of Locusts, the Plague of Darkness) Pharaoh has agreed to allow the entire slave population of Hebrews to leave Egypt, but we all wonder, is it a trap? “Will he have a change of heart once he realizes that all his slaves have gone and that no one is left to build his grand structures? Will Pharaoh’s army pursue us? Will they slaughter us like lambs for our insubordination? Or will they stand down and allow us to return to our ancestral home in Canaan?” “How will we survive the desert? Where will we find food and water?” As the bread passes over our lips, our stomach’s rumble, our fingers tremble, our teeth chatter. As we drink cupful after cupful of water, our thirst is not slaked. Our skin remains flushed; our throats are parched. We are told we must trust Moshe (he is fully eighty years old, yet still strong) for it is he who will lead the Israelites out of bondage and to the Promised Land. I have my doubts…
As the hour reaches eleven, we hear messengers moving through the streets, going house to house and marking doorways against the tenth and certainly most consequential plague, Death of the Firstborn. This is it! This is the beginning. Generations held in bondage. Our spiritual leader himself the sole survivor of a bygone brutal massacre, an innocent child found amongst the reeds in a basket and reared as an Egyptian Prince by Pharaoh’s daughter! Yet, Moshe always knew he was not Egyptian, but a Hebrew; and when he lost his temper and killed an Egyptian guard for beating a Hebrew slave to death, he ran into the desert to escape his fate. There, Yahweh spoke in a thunderous voice to Moshe from a burning bush and told him to return to Egypt and lead His people out of bondage. Was this Yahweh’s idea of a joke? Forty years wandering in the Sinai with hardly a drop of water and only manna to eat? Or was it the mass delusion of a captive People with nothing left to lose? Was it the Jewish God’s way of delivering His people to the land of milk and honey? Or was it simply the result of a hallucination experienced by Moshe, a man with an iron will and a body far too strong for its years? Whether orchestrated by God, or the fantastic folly of one man with fire in his eyes and steel in his constitution, I realize, from my futuristic point of reference, that this is an event on which two millennia of history will pivot. So I gather my courage and ready myself for the long and arduous journey home.
Silently and steadily, the procession grows in number as we move through the streets. No resistance is offered from Pharaoh’s soldiers. We reach the city walls and move into the vast abyss of the desert, a throng of a hundred thousand or more, finally free, finally on our way home, wherever home may be. We walk with our families; we walk with friends. We lead our animals, and we carry what we can upon our backs. We have had no time to bake the bread we will need, so we transport the dough, sour and uncooked. We know our water will not last long, but Moshe entreats us not to worry, that there is water inside the stones. “Water inside the stones? What water, Moshe? A stone is but a stone!” wail the doubters. The prophet taps his staff upon a rock, and a torrent gushes out to quench our thirst—the exigent thirst of a people in bondage for centuries, a people now able to drink freely from God’s fountain.
Yet, as the sun rises upon the desert horizon, our travails are only just beginning. A hundred thousand souls cast out of civilization—out of a life of bondage, but one also of relative comfort—and onto a vast and inhospitable desert. We are a people outcast by our own choice. This is the terrain of trial and of time. Time has no end, only the promise of a distant memory. And a leader half our own who carries Yahweh’s banner. Feet burn over endless barren ground. This is not the Land of Milk and Honey. This is not the Promised Land. Day after day, week after week, month after month, one encampment after another, a time of trial and of time, a test of endurance, worthiness and desire, a test of ingenuity and faith.
After only a few weeks, the bread we carried with us is gone, and the raw dough is sour and rancid. “Moshe, what shall we eat?” the people ask. They are already weary, exhausted.
“From this moment until we reach the Promised Land, we shall eat only the food that comes from Heaven!” proclaims the prophet.
Next morning, manna arrives after the morning dew has gone.
Manna is white as coriander seed and sweet as honey. Eaten raw, it tastes like sweet wafers; ground and cooked it is like sweetbread. It nourishes the body, but it also nourishes the spirit. Yet we take only what we will use this day, because the manna attracts insects and spoils when not eaten immediately.
How is it possible that this food from God has come to His people in the midst of this hellish place, literally falling from the sky onto this burning desert? And what is its nature? What are its composition and its properties?
For more information, I suspend my virtual ‘experience’ for a few moments to consult my database in VL. What I find is not only surprising, but also somewhat amusing, if not telling. A number of ethnomycologists, such as R. Gordon Watson, John Marco Allegro and Terence McKenna, have suggested that most characteristics of manna are similar to that of Psilocybe cubensis mushrooms, notorious breeding grounds for insects, and which also decompose rapidly. These peculiar fungi naturally produce a number of molecules that resemble human neurochemicals, and first appear as small fibers that resemble hoarfrost. This speculation (also paralleled in Philip K. Dick's novel,
The Transmigration of Timothy Archer,
which Crystal and I republished, posthumously, of course), is supported in a wider cultural context when compared with the praise of Haomain, the Rigveda, Mexican praise of teonanácatl, the peyote sacrament of the Native American Church, and the Holy Ayahuasca used in the ritual of the União do Vegetal and Santo Daime.
Each day one omer of manna is gathered per family member, and although some are diligent enough to go into the fields to gather it, like Deborah and Miriam and me, others simply catch it with outstretched hands. It is true that greater amounts of manna are found near the homes of those with a strong belief in Yahweh, while it is found quite far from the homes of those who doubt. In fact, manna is intangible to the Gentiles, as it simply slips from their hands. Yahweh’s gift to His people, manna falls in very large quantities each day and is layered out over two thousand cubits square (between fifty and sixty cubits in height); which is enough to nourish the Israelites for two thousand years, as well as be seen from the palaces of every king in the East and the West.
And that’s a lotta manna
!
As we approach the Red Sea (or is it the Sea of Reeds?) we learn that Pharaoh has had a change of heart (the final and most devastating plague of all has been wrought upon Egypt by Yahweh) and the Egyptian ruler has sent his armies to recapture the Israelites as slaves. As we travel mostly on foot, and Pharaoh’s soldiers pursue us in their horse drawn chariots, we embrace no hope of outpacing them. Indeed, with the sea before us, and with Pharaoh’s armies closing from the rear, it would seem that we are pinned down in the desert, where we will either be recaptured or simply slaughtered. Confronting Moshe, many of the Israelites are angry, and suspicious of a deception. “Why has Yahweh led His people into such a threatening position while offering no way to defend His people, or providing no route of escape?” they implore.
Moshe’s faith in Yahweh is not shaken.
“The one God, Yahweh by name, has identified the Israelites as His Chosen People, and He will not forsake them!” Moshe thunders.
“Pharaoh’s armies are right on our heels,” the critics remind their leader.
For a moment only, Moshe seems in a quandary. He looks up, toward Heaven, waiting for Yahweh to either send him inspiration or strike him dead. Either one will do nicely at this precarious moment in time. “Raise your staff before the waters,” Yahweh commands Moshe, and the leader of the exodus does as his God bids him.
Miraculously, the sea parts, creating a passageway between two huge walls of water. Looking sternly at those who have lost faith in Yahweh, Moshe proclaims to the Israelites, “We now pass between the swells on our journey home to the land of Canaan. And behold the fate of Pharaoh’s soldiers!”
A few of us in close proximity see Moshe shaking his head in consternation. Perhaps he wishes Yahweh would make this journey just a bit shorter, or a bit easier, or that He would at least warn him in advance of some of the more precarious obstacles the Israelites must face. Ah, no such luck, Moshe. As they say on the whiskey commercial:
Just keep walking!
Through the gorge move one hundred twenty thousand, a three hundred-foot wall of water roaring on either side, women crying and praying for salvation, children clawing their mothers’ legs, men beating back imaginary enemies with imaginary swords, animals stinking of fear, lightning crashing overhead, and a relentless wind howling the name of
Yahweh
over and over again.
As Pharaoh’s soldiers follow in close pursuit, Moshe presses onward. He knows in every nerve and every fiber of muscle in his lean and hardened body, in every pore, and in tooth and nail, in rash and blister, and in each drop of sweat, that Yahweh is real, and that Yahweh is his master, his God. And that he, Moshe, is God’s messenger. He is not only the man of the hour, but he is the man of the Age. His steps are the steps of God. His thoughts are God’s thoughts; his purpose is God’s purpose. Finally, Yahweh will reign from His throne in Canaan, with the Israelites as His obedient people, forever and ever…
Amen
!
As the last of the Israelites emerges from the gulf, the sea folds back upon itself, closing the passageway and drowning every last soldier in Pharaoh’s army. Disbelieving pilgrims bow down on bended knee to their all-powerful God, Yahweh, and to his man of the hour, Moshe, son of Amran, descended from the line of Levi. A miracle has occurred. The table has been laid. A place has been prepared for the Israelites—in Heaven and on Earth. The Promised Land cannot be far away now.
As our camp is established at the foot of Mount Sinai—and this is not a camp meant to last a few days, or even a few weeks, but rather months or even years—Moshe is summoned by Yahweh to the top of the mountain to receive God’s law. Moshe’s solitary communication with Yahweh is well established by now, but even after the miracle delivering the Israelites from Pharaoh’s army, many still do not trust Moshe and take every opportunity to discredit him. “Why does God talk only to him?” they ask. “Why will He not speak to Aaron, who is surely a noble man of our people?”