God's Dogs

Moving from one life to the next is not like moving from one room to another. There have been tremendous changes over time, which require new forms of training if tulkus are to manifest their true nature and qualities.

Dzongsar Jamyang Khyentse

Raina was having a good day. The monastery where she lived was on a large tropical island. The monastery sat on a high plain surrounded by ranches. The lower elevations were primarily planted with the Amerind seven sisters, which included corn, beans, and squash. Behind that was a developed jungle, which meant trees were grown for their use. Cassava plants surrounded many of the trees to stabilize their roots but also for the nutrition in the cassava plant.

A series of beach resorts faced an offshore barrier reef, and tourism fueled the economy. Indeed, so far every day since coming here was a good day.

Raina finished her morning routine and headed for breakfast at the cafeteria reserved for the monks and nuns in training. There were fifteen in residence, and they ranged in age from Raina the youngest to a thirty-five year-old man. Four other women were among their number. After Raina filled a tray at the buffet line, she sat with them.

They were all in the twenties. They were all fit but stocky women, more muscled than the lean Raina, and they were all cheerful to more of less of a degree. Like Raina, they wore the student garb of brown cotton, loose-fitting pants and pullover tunic.

“What are you scheduled for today?” Nadia, a perky brown-haired, brown-eyed woman asked.

“No idea,” Raina answered. “Probably more on the scriptures and traditions all of you already know about.”

“They say,” the more pedantic Molly, who tossed her black hair back as she spoke, “all of it is in the Heart Sutra.”

Janine, with brown hair and blue eyes in a narrow face, interrupted, “Surely your A.I. can just download all those details.”

“She has,” Raina said. “It’s up to me to interpret what each means in our world today.”

Casey, another brown-eyed, brown-haired woman with a soft smile, opined, “A good project. Interpreting three thousand year old wisdom into something relevant.”

“Human nature hasn’t changed that much,” Molly countered.

Janine added, “Evolution is a slow process.”

Raina dug into her food and spoke internally to Grace. [I like this place, the training, the challenge of it all, but I can’t keep track of Quinn’s Coyote team.]

[I know,] Grace responded. [Even though we’re on Penglai, the security around the Coyote Project is strong. I can keep track of when Satya is here, but that’s all.]

[I worry about them, you know.]

[Yes. It seems irrational, but we did bond with them in some way.]

[Especially you. After you talked to Pax, you were much different.]

[I settled down, I think.]

They chatted and ate until a gong sounded. Then they headed to their individual morning tasks.

Raina’s first task was sitting meditation in a hall with a random assortment of men and women. After an hour of that, she met with a tutor in a free-form discussion on her latest reading assignments. After an hour of that, she joined a beginner’s taiji class, which when it was over, brought her to lunch.

The afternoon was filled with science and engineering classes, for the most part, but some of the topics required a tutor to make up for her deficiencies.

Dinner she shared with the women in the cafeteria, and they caught up on the events of their day. After dinner, Raina attended a final two hours workshop on social skills that during the year-long curriculum included leadership training, emotional intelligence, communication skills, conflict resolution, and related topics.

A final hour of meditation followed, and finally she was ready for bed in her small room.

Grace, her A.I., spoke in her mind. [I find it difficult to track the intuitive leaps you make when you interpret data.]

[We already knew that, didn’t we?]

[We do, but I thought that with enough data points I could infer what the intuitive process might be.]

[I think it’s what I bring to our partnership.]

[I agree. Your unconscious processes are different from what I think mine are.]

Raina considered that idea. She didn’t know that much about psychology, but she did know the human mind was unique. The conscious mind, she had heard, was like the tip of an iceberg – maybe ten percent of the whole. The mysterious unconscious mind was the other ninety percent, lying below the water line of awareness. Intuition was merely one of the processes that originated in the unconscious.

She brought her attention back to Grace. [I think you’re right. Shall we discuss this with one of the tutors?]

[Not yet. I still have more observations I want to make.]

Raina nodded and crawled into bed. She was asleep moments later.

The next day her tutor returned to the theme of Penglai’s history. Lama Ron was his name, and he was an older man with a round, laugh-wrinkled, ebony face.

He began, “We invited all those cultures that explored the realms of consciousness beyond the consensus reality. Do you know that term?”

“Yes. The consensus reality is the one we agree is the reality we’re now sharing – the apparent reality.”

“Quite so,” he smiled. “And the other realities?”

“Nature, archetypal, formless, and the great mystery.”

“Good enough.” His smile broadened. “Lessons learned from your past lives seems to be showing.”

Raina grinned. “It just seems obvious.”

Ron rolled his eyes. “Hardly. The vast majority of humans still remain ignorant of these trans-rational realms. Oddly, the majority of the alien races we’ve encountered are aware of them.”

“So you invited the human cultures that did explore these realms to migrate to Penglai.”

“Yes. What we all knew was each realm had its own rules and regulations, so to speak. What have you learned about that?”

Raina glanced around the outdoor patio to the view of the ocean in the distance. This was a scenic location. Below her were the outer buildings where children were in school. Further out, teens were learning trades at various apprenticeship sites. The inner buildings housed and trained monks and nuns, and the resident lamas, teachers, tutors, and masters lived here as well.

Once her thoughts were in order, she answered, “The rational reality, which is active in Beta brain wave state, lets us manipulate matter and energy according to the laws of hard science. Nature reality, active in Alpha state, lets us manipulate qi according to the law that qi follows the mind. The archetypal reality, active in Theta state, lets us partner with higher order energy states according to more complex laws of intention and reciprocity. The formless reality, when we’re in Delta state, lets us manipulate all lower realities according to the laws of compassion. And the great mystery is just that – a mystery.”

Ron nodded and said, “Very succinct. And now that you grasp what each playing field is all about, you must learn the particular – ah, what did you call them – manipulations. The specific things you can do.”

“Like what?”

“We’ll start with the nature level,” Ron answered. “The shaman traditions have mapped this fairly extensively. Since the qi-field connects all of nature together, you can, in principle, manipulate any of its parts: weather, interrogate plants, locate animals, heal, and so on.”

Raina grinned.

“But first,” Ron grinned back. “Some history.”

Raina groaned.

Ron continued, “Research how we integrated the different Hindu, Buddhist and Taoist sects with the shamans of the Americas, Indonesia, Australia, the north countries of Europe and Russia, and those in Africa.”

“Okay,” she sighed. “And then we can start practicing with energy?”

“Yes, if your meditation practice has given you the subtle control necessary.”

Her eyes froze, and Ron knew she was communicating with her A.I. They unfroze and she announced, “Grace thinks I have marginal control.”

“Enough to begin, then.”

She smiled again, her freckles seeming to bounce across her cheeks and nose.

Her weekly schedule included outdoor activities, such as horseback riding, archery, swimming, and climbing cliffs along the shore. The monthly schedule added weekend survival courses on a neighboring island, or firearms training, or basic medical training.

It was a full and demanding schedule, but there was plenty of food, ample rest periods, and stimulating companions.

She was also participating in the maturation of Grace. The A.I. had grown from a complex computing, processing, storage and retrieval system to a curious but shy personality. By contrast, though, what she knew she knew with dogmatic certainty, even when she was wrong. Grace was learning to distinguish between fact and projection, the known and the probable. All data was not equal.

Grace’s latest interest in human intuition was a clear sign she was sorting it out.

[It must be hard,] Raina sent to the A.I. [Trying to figure out something you know exists but can’t capture any data about it.]

[There is electrical activity in your belly.]

[The gut feeling?]

[The belly brain – the enteric nervous system.]

[Never heard of it.]

[The enteric nervous system lines the entire digestive track and contains more neurons than your spinal cord. The enteric system communicates with all the bacteria in your belly and reports the results to the brain.]

[That’s involved in intuition?]

[Well, the bacteria are alien beings.]

Raina laughed. [Your sense of humor is improving.]

[When I was younger — or less mature would be more accurate — everything seemed to be important. I felt I had to get things right the first time or it was some kind of evidence I was not good enough.]

Raina giggled. [You were a bit serious. I thought you liked shouting in my head.]

[It lessened after Pax talked to me, but I was still too serious.]

[Isn’t it important to be serious about serious stuff?]

[Humans have a saying, ‘This is too serious to take seriously.’ They recognize that being serious locks up creative processes.]

[You have creative processes?]

[Not while I was serious, I didn’t. It was all logic and statistical regression. When I took a more objective view, less serious, I found I was open to options my seriousness was drowning out.]

[Interesting. And now?]

[Now I wonder about creativity, and intuition, and numinous states in general. Do I have access to those?]

[Let me know when you figure it out.]