Mission (53 page)

Because of their power and completeness, Ya'el and Gabriel were able to fuse their meta-psyches with those of Joshua and Johanan; absorbing through them the bodily sensations of their human hosts and their experience of the external world. When they spoke, it was with the voice of Joshua or Johanan but, on those occasions, it was the personality and force of character of Ya'el and Gabriel that impressed itself upon the listener. It was at these moments that people said – ‘
the spirit was upon them'.

In the same way, Ya'el and Gabriel could break contact with Joshua and Johanan while remaining within the host-body. This withdrawal usually took place when they felt the need to shut themselves off from the influences of the external world; the inputs from the bodily senses. It was a defensive move designed to avoid unnecessary contamination of their meta-psyches. When this withdrawal took place, Joshua and Johanan took over control as they did when Ya'el and Gabriel detached themselves completely.

One last point, which concerns Ya'el in particular. I have already
mentioned The Man's striking gaze. It appears that the disciples and others who were close to The Man could tell when Ya'el was absent by the way that Joshua's eyes dimmed. Almost as if somebody had switched a light off inside his head.

Within a week of arriving home, The Man announced that he was leaving to seek out his cousin Johanan. Mary, his mother, did not let go of his sleeve until she had elicited a firm promise that he would return in time to go with the rest of the family to the wedding in Cana. In fact, she wanted to send his brother James along to make sure that The Man came back on time but James managed to persuade her to let him go alone.

As the second child, James was more aware of the disturbing ‘otherness' that had periodically descended on his brother during their childhood years together. Like his mother, James knew that Joshua was able to generate, now and then, an inexplicable power to make things happen. He remembered seeing The Man-child twirling himself round to raise a howling dust-storm that blinded his tormentors; how he made stones fly like a flock of birds and sent them buzzing round the heads of boys chasing them both with sticks, from a neighbouring village where they didn't like Jews; and the whispered, worried conversations of Mary and Joseph in the middle of the night when they voiced their fears that, in his childish anger, their strange star-child might turn his powers against them and their other children.

They need not have worried. Although the struggle with ‘Brax and the internal conflict between Ya'el and Joshua had often made the growing Man-child moody and recalcitrant, he never forgot the trauma of his physical birth that he had shared with his teenage mother, and the love with which she had nursed him while he had lain totally helpless in her arms.

From Nazareth, The Man headed south-east across the Plain of Esdraelon through the town of Scythopolis to Salim on the River Jordan. As he met people on the road, he enquired if they knew where he could find the holy man – Johanan the Baptiser. No one was quite sure. Some thought that he might still be around Aenon; others said they had heard that Johanan had moved north towards Galilee. But that had been a month ago, when Gabriel had been summoned to Mount Hermon.

At Aenon, The Man discovered that the Essene community had moved south to the Dead Sea, and the villagers confirmed that
Johanan had last been seen moving north. The Man turned around and followed the river until he came to the road across the Jordan that led to the eastern shore of the Sea of Galilee. As he drew level with the township of Agrippina perched on the hill-side west of the river, he saw a crowd down on the bank and a line of people crossing the road ahead of him. He questioned a woman at the tail-end of the group. She told him they had come down from Gadara to be blessed by the holy man.

Following her down to the river, The Man saw Johanan-Gabriel standing hip-deep in the Jordan flanked by two of his disciples. Four more were busy trying to bring some semblance of order to the line of people waiting to be baptised. The years of arduous physical and mental discipline, first with the Essenes and then in the solitude of the barren hills of Judea, had burned every trace of fat from Johanan's body; enabling him to survive in conditions that would have broken ten ordinary men.

Although he had never disclosed the fact to Ya'el, Gabriel had always known the ultimate purpose of the mission. Ya'el was the instrument through which The Word was to be brought back into the world; he was to provide the initial impetus that would lead to the eventual liberation of the Ain-folk. During the last two years, Gabriel had been the herald, announcing through Johanan that good news was on the way.

And so it was that Joshua-Ya'el came to the Jordan below Gadara and stood in line with the rest of the poor sons of Canaan: the shepherds, goatherds, the quarrymen who hammered loose the great blocks of stone for the younger Herod's grandiose building projects, the tanners and dyers, those who took the place of oxen at the plough, and those with green, nimble fingers who tended the vines; the women who worked the fields, wove the cloth, pounded the corn and baked the unleavened bread.

The Man didn't say anything when the two of them came face-to-face and, as he told it, Johanan-Gabriel was halfway through the simple ceremony of bestowing God's blessing before he realised who he was laying hands on.

It's hard for us to appreciate the hierarchical intricacies of the Celestial Empire where the differences in nature, rank and function are not quantifiable in terms we can fully understand but, as the Book records, Johanan-Gabriel was reluctant to go through with it. The Man insisted, saying, ‘
Suffer it to be so now: for thus it becometh us to
fulfil all righteousness.
' Which is a mite impenetrable but, when translated into the modern idiom, comes out as – ‘Don't wait for me to start walking on the water. Just throw me a goddamn life-jacket.'

When The Man submitted to baptism at the hands of Johanan-Gabriel, it was an act of utter humility; an admission of his failure to keep faith with the Empire. It symbolised the rescue of Ya'el's meta-psyche from the dark spiral vortex of the ‘Braxian world. Ya'el was like a drowning man reaching up a hand; pleading to be saved. But aside from its cosmic significance, it was an emotional reunion too as Joshua and Johanan clasped each other like two long-lost brothers; half-laughing, half-crying, and drenched to the skin.

Leaving Andreas, an ex-fisherman, in charge of the other disciples, Johanan-Gabriel led The Man round the western side of the Sea of Galilee, to Bethsaida and Caesarea Philippi; the capital of the province ruled by the third surviving son of Herod the Great – Herod Philip.

When Joshua and Johanan had found lodgings and were safely asleep, Ya'el and Gabriel transferred their meta-psyches to the landing module buried near the summit of Mount Hermon.

Once again let me stress, as The Man did constantly, the need to reach beyond the
Star Trek
connotations of the words we're obliged to use. The landing module was not a mechanical contrivance filled with instruments. Like Ya'el and Gabriel, it was brought into being by the Empire. It was a metaphysical construct; part of the Celestial packaging designed to protect their temporal aspects during penetration of the space-time dimension; powered by the Will of The Presence.

As you can see, ‘landing module' is less of a mouthful.

Using the newly transmitted energy, Ya'el contacted the Empire via the approaching starfleet. He learned what Gabriel already knew, which was that the breakdown in the landing module had been prearranged to force Ya'el's integration with a human host. Michael had been left in the dark in order to create a genuine feeling of crisis, the double objective of which was to mislead ‘Brax, tempting him into a mood of over-confidence, and to trick Ya'el into thinking that he and Gabriel might be permanently marooned. This deception had been necessary in order to ensure that Ya'el totally identified himself with the plight of the trapped Ain-folk.

His twelve long years on the road had been a vital part of his mission. For it was only through living as a man that he could fully
understand the human condition. Because of who he was, he had suffered more at the hands of ‘Brax than any of the other Celestial envoys to Earth. He had returned to Palestine weakened, demoralised and almost without hope but the Empire regarded his journey as a triumph. It did not matter that he had been beaten to his knees. The fact that he had sought out Johanan-Gabriel to seek God's blessing, humbly taking his turn among the
amme ha 'aretz,
the people of the land, meant he had kept faith. He had taken everything that ‘Brax could throw at him and he had come through.

But at what a cost. The Empire might regard the mission as a triumph but Ya'el knew that, with the crippling degree of
karma
he had acquired, he could never return to the Ninth Universe. Worse still, he could not pass through the Time Gate. He had become trapped in the endless cycle of reincarnation; one more Celestial prisoner of the World Below.

It was at this point, when he had reached the depths of despair that the miracle happened. In an extraordinary act of faith that put the Empire at risk, The Presence moved to free Ya'el from ‘Brax's temporal dominion. Once again, we're stuck with our own words but bear with me. This is pretty mystical stuff but I've reduced it to the simplest possible terms and thrown Teilhard de Chardin out of the window.

Imagine a laser-like beam of cosmic power, triggered by the Will of The Presence, blasting out through the Time Gate and across the yawning vastnesses of physical space. This is the real thing. One hundred per cent pure God. The stuff that angels' dreams are made of. Follow it now, as it punches a hole right through the bad static ‘Brax has spread around the Universe, is relayed along the line of rescue craft and is deflected by the lead ship into the buried module on Mount Hermon. And now, think of it raying through Ya'el's meta-psyche, wiping out his earthly
karma;
cleansing him of both past
and future
actions; restoring his spiritual perfection and replenishing his powers.

This was the moment when Joshua-Ya'el was transmuted by the Power of The Presence into the figure described in the opening chapter of John's Gospel. The Logos. The Word made flesh. Full of Grace and Truth. The Son of Man; what we were all, in the fullness of time, to become. And it is depicted in symbolical form in the paintings of the Baptism of Christ in which The Man stands haloed in the Jordan, with a dove descending from God's hand.

Some of you may ask, did the painters know the secret? The answer is, not necessarily. As The Man said, The Word has the power of God, or The Presence behind it. That's why Truth is often linked symbolically with a sword. It keeps breaking through the barriers set up by ‘Brax and working on us in all kinds of ways. Sometimes subconsciously. No matter how much he tries to twist the message, he can't destroy it. The Word lives.

It was now that Ya'el learned that he had twelve months, and not the three years some authorities have claimed, to set up the nucleus of a liberation movement that was to be fuelled by a massive power input from the Empire. The transmission would take place when the rescue fleet was in position with the longship at the head of the chain in solar orbit, but a prerequisite step was the liberation of Ya'el's meta-psyche through the physical death of his earth-host – by crucifixion.

After all the good news, the manner in which he was required to die came as a profound shock and, as some of you know from the Book, the decision did not go unquestioned. Both Ya'el and his companion psyche Joshua were still haunted by the shared childhood memory of the two thousand Jews crucified by Varus outside the walls of Jerusalem.

Gabriel drew an easier death sentence. In order to assist in the planned resurrection of The Man, he was instructed to arrange for his earth-host to die within the next three months. The death of his earth-host before that of The Man was also intended to check that their spirit-beings could escape unhindered from the chains that bound them to the world of ‘Brax. Remaining true to the character he had created through Johanan, Gabriel proposed to provoke his arrest by Herod Antipas by publicly denouncing his dissolute relationship with his wife and niece Herodias, and her daughter Salome who, by all accounts, was an X-rated version of Shirley Temple. His plan met with the Empire's approval.

Breaking contact, the two Celestials slipped back into their unconscious hosts at Caesarea Philippi and, the next day, prompted Joshua and Johanan into making the return trip. As they passed through Capernaum they crossed the path of Shimon-Petrus who stopped folding his nets and stared back curiously at the golden-eyed stranger as he walked by. Like me, Shimon had no inkling of what lay ahead. Or that, in fact, the bearded stranger was a second cousin long given up for dead.

When they rejoined Johanan-Gabriel's small band of disciples at Salim, Andreas, who was also gifted with a high degree of ESP, was quick to discern the aura of Celestial power that now radiated from Joshua-Ya'el. Johanan-Gabriel introduced The Man to his disciples and explained that they were now to follow him. He, Johanan, would soon be arrested and put to death by Herod Antipas. The six young men were shocked and bewildered by this unexpected news. Johanan-Gabriel reassured them. This was not the end but the beginning. The Man was the Messiah whose arrival he had predicted.
He
was the Master they must now follow. But in the meantime, they were to go home and wait there till summoned by The Man. Later, when they had gone, Gabriel told Ya'el that he would send along someone else who might prove useful. A man who had joined the Essene commune after Ya'el had left, and whose given name was Judas.

Once more Ya'el and Gabriel were at the parting of the ways. It was the last time they saw each other alive; the last physical embrace. Joshua-Ya'el made his way up into the Judean hills; Johanan-Gabriel set off to tour the towns of Galilee. The Man told us how he had stopped and looked back as Johanan's ragged, wild-haired figure strode resolutely away down the road, never once looking over his shoulder. Doubtless rehearsing the fire-and-brimstone speech that was to put Herod the Fox on the spot, Herodias into a towering rage, and his own head on a plate.