YOUR MOTHER LIED

The sun had set throwing forth magnificent rays of white and yellow behind the great High Sierra Mountains. It was dusk and the night was taking its place in this vast Mojave Desert, as I drove the new red Corvette down a winding desolate but paved road. Kyle, a co-worker and friend, had asked me to join him on a trip to visit his girlfriend in Bishop, California. We had been exploring back roads and he hit something one shouldn't hit with a low ground-hugging Corvette, and we lost power steering. It was at that time that he had suddenly become heroically generous and let me drive his Corvette. It now drove like a WW II tank, but I didn't care, I was driving. 

We decided to call it a day and I pulled into a pullout at the side of the road. Kyle immediately rolled out his sleeping bag under some straggly and weathered trees, and hit the hay. It had been a long day of having fun, and last night he probably did not get much sleep with his girlfriend.

I had another urge, in my normal wanderlust fashion. I took off across the road and walked out into the dark desert. It was a moonless night without a human created light to see anywhere, except the magnificent starry canopy above. As I stared at the stars, recognizing some constellations I learned in Boy Scouts, I got another strange urge. I found my hands raising up towards the heavens and my mouth spoke out loud,  "whatever rules this universe, give me a direction, give me a way". As I said these words I was wondering why I was saying this. As a kind of immediate answer I sensed intuitively this was what my deepest unconscious soulic yearning truly desired. Then a searing bright light flashed across the sky from horizon to horizon, a wide ribbon of white light. It lingered only shortly and disappeared. There was no sound with this light, and there were no clouds or lightening in the distance.

I stood there stunned and motionless, in shock. What had caused me to say those strange words? Then the flash of light to immediately follow would suggest the answer was a 'yes'? Prior to this event I considered myself to be an agnostic or atheist. But suddenly I could not deny some form of supernatural interference in my life. For the light to occur right after my request and at no other time was highly suspicious. Did someone or something intelligent know what I was going to say and when? It would appear so. My hands were still up in the air as I stood in shock. I lowered my hands and wondered. What did this mean?

I had been through college and was told by the authoritative professors that the 'experts' knew all there was to know, but they had not told me of a light in the desert. Was there a world the experts did not know of, or did they know and were keeping it for themselves? I wondered. In one flash of knowing light I had lost faith in the 'experts' and gained wonderment in things mysterious. Unbeknown to me that flash of light in a desert on a dark night began in me a whole new awareness and perspective of life.  From that time on my life would become an outer and inner adventure.

I decided I had enough stargazing and returned to the Corvette. I rolled out my sleeping bag and fell fast asleep. In the early morning dark I awoke and heard Kyle calling my name. He was bothered by his very real ghostly dreams he had been having. I told him, "oh, I was having those dreams too. There was a car accident near here and those are the wandering dead reaching out for help. They will disappear once that moon goes behind Mt. Whitney there." Kyle accepted this advice as from one who knows such things. I then lay there wondering how in the world I 'knew' what I just said. And sure enough, when the moon went behind the great mountain the ghostly dreams stopped for both of us.

Up to yesterday I had never had a memorable dream in my life, and certainly not a vision. I did not know what intuition was or inner knowing. I had not experienced foreknowledge, nor had I had a deja vu. I had never had the experience of telepathy, or sensing other worlds or dimensions. It turned out I would have all those things for the rest of my life. And, I had developed those gifts (some would call them curses) without anything slightly resembling religion, meditative practices, any kind of drug, or even any desire to have those 'gifts'. 

The next morning, after a hearty meal of a few candy bars, we took off again. Around a bend in the road we spied an amazing sight. Off to the side of the road and across a small fast creek, was a high black volcanic flow that had hardened as it cooled on the desert floor. This hardened igneous mass of glass-like substance was about 75 feet high with a flat top and angular sides. I suggested we climb and explore it. After we crossed the creek we approached the black wall of rock towering above us. Carefully we made it up the rock face, careful because igneous rock is very sharp and unforgiving to soft flesh. This side was somewhat broken down so we could climb it relatively easily. Judging from the condition of the flow it was from a very recent eruption, maybe only hundreds of years old. The Mammoth and Lassen area of California is still growing upward and is very active geologically. Earthquakes are common, and poisonous steam rises to the surface often. The area is an old volcanic caldera (a volcano that exploded and obliterated its cone) like Yellowstone or Las Alamos, NM. Some people, as the Indians that used to inhabit such areas, have spoken of these areas as sacred due to enormous energies released into the atmosphere from deep within the earth. Ancient peoples used to go to such areas for vision quests and initiations. The oracle of Delphi in ancient Greece was said to sit on a tripod seat over a great chasm that reached deep within the earth. The oracle was a 'sensitive' who tuned into the energies being omitted from the earth. I mention these things as possible explanations for the strange phenomena of the night before, and what was about to occur today.

Kyle and myself reached the top of the flow and studied the view. In three directions was vast desert. To the west were the towering uplifts of granite. Mt. Whitney rose above all the other mountains as the highest mountain in the continental USA. I had climbed it twice, gasping for air in the thin atmosphere. The sky is black with a white hole where the sun is, similar to what the astronauts’ experience. In the early morning there is a false sunrise when the sun bounces off the Appalachian Mountains and the eastern sky begins to brighten, t