"Yes," replied Jim, "I’ve just been attempting to reach Nirvana on my latest trip."

All Things Relative by Carl James Johnson

Jim’s subconscious sought to intercept his past thoughts before they moved out of reach. Their electromagnetic patterns would not linger long, for Jim’s gravity field was relatively insignificant as opposed to that of a black hole, for instance. His subconscious sped down the tunnel of memories looking to interact with and relive a recent past thought he hoped would once again lead him into a higher dimension and Nirvana. "Nirvana?" inquired the pretty lady tourist from Guyana of her seat mate. Jim realizes as he awakens, that he must have muttered the word while in his trance.

"Yes," replied Jim, "I’ve just been attempting to reach Nirvana on my latest trip."

"You!" exclaimed his seat mate.

"Yes me," replied Jim, "I’m on this trip. Oh, I’m not talking about this plane ride that we’re on. Ever since I started my new job as a remote viewer with the CIA, I have been slipping into these trances, where on occasion I’ve experienced a state in which I am completely focused on whatever I’m doing and completely at peace with my surroundings. I refer to this state as Nirvana."

"I’m familiar with the word," she said. "Your work with the CIA must be very interesting," she added.

"I find it fascinating," said Jim, "especially my latest assignment which involved gathering information about the most recent activities at the Vatican regarding Israel and the Middle East. I’m afraid I can’t say much more about it, for it’s classified," he added, trying not to sound too melodramatic or appear too self-important. "I think I understand," responded his seat mate, as she settled back in her seat.

Jim felt himself reaching back through the tunnel of memories once again. A one way tunnel in which his subconscious had to travel faster than light speed in order to keep up with, and eventually overtake his past thoughts. The colors swirled before his eyes; one color turning into another, sometimes blending, when they would form blurred pictures. They are the gateways to Jim’s past thought patterns. As the pictures or drawings became more focused however, they would invariably start to break up. Sometimes the pictures appeared to move towards him; at other times he seemed to be moving towards the pictures. Motion is all a mather of relativity, Jim is thinking. With regards to relativity, the word relative comes to mind. He feels himself to be so far into the past by now, that he should be intercepting the thought patterns of those, of preceding generations. The pictorial information as representative of the thought patterns of those generations however, appear as out of focus, as did his own past thoughts. Either his relatives had a paucity of thought, possibly of a different wavelength, or their collective ideas amounted to nothing more than a bunch of bull-shit, Jim is thinking. He keeps on speeding through the tunnel hoping to find some relative having had a responsible enough station in life, wherever, whenever, so that their thoughts would not almost exclusively deal with some unfocused idea, perhaps occurring while his or her mind was partly occupied by the performance of some trivial, repetitive task. For what coherent thoughts can anyone possibly have while using only one-half of their mind, he reasons. With this in mind, Jim continues studying the drawings going by him.

Suddenly the drawing directly in front of him starts to come into focus. He moves towards and into what appears to be a conference room. There at center stage and the center of attention, is Jim’s eleventh cousin once removed. Jim is aware of the family connection by sheer intuition. His distant cousin, Pope Pius the twelfth, has his hand up. Could that be a Hitler salute? Jim wonders. The answer becomes obvious when Jim is able to make out the figure with the small mustache, hair parted to the side, who in turn has his arm upraised in the familiar Nazi salute. Then the picture breaks up.

Jim is able to focus once again. He finds himself in a bedroom setting, standing by a luxurious bed, in which his illustrious relative, Pope Pius #12, is engaged in heated sex with a blonde Germanic looking woman.

"Oh, Hell," said His Holiness, as he saw Jim standing there, looking at him and the frauline in his arms.

"I didn’t mean for you to see me like this, but I had to get you away from where you were."

Suddenly the image of the frauline disappeared from within his grasp, whereupon he adjusted his robes. Placing his arms by his sides, he lay back on the bed staring at the ceiling.

"You mean in that conference room, giving the Hitler salute," said Jim.

"Yes," he replied in a defiant tone of voice. "You could never realize the demands placed upon me in my position. I had to know what everyone from statesmen to chief economist were thinking and planning, in order that I made my policies accordingly. I was the arbitrator between the National Socialists of Germany and the Jews of Europe. Because of my seeming to cooperate with Hitler, I was able to secure safe passage out of Germany for non-other than Albert Einstein, the greatest scientist of the 20^th century," said Pius #12, a note of admiration creeping into his voice.

"Do you begrudge me a bit of rest and relaxation?" he asked, obviously referring to the position in which Jim had found him. "Not at all, my holy distant cousin," said Jim, "but I was hoping to visit more of your working world."

"Do you realize what a burden I was stuck with there, in the time and place of Adolph Hitler?" he continued in a whin’y voice. "Hitler’s personality was bent way out of shape because of his reverence for those German Aryan fraulines."

"Surely you mean the Fuhrer, like any other healthy, normal man lusted after the fraulines more than he revered them." Jim thought he could discern a hint of amusement in the eyes of his Holiness. He appeared in fact to be on the verge of bursting out in laughter, as Jim uttered the words ‘healthy’ and ‘normal’, in reference to Hitler. "The poor Fuhrer was completely mesmerized by Germanic womenhood. He was spiritually seduced by them, to the extent that he allowed them to urinate all over his face," here his Holiness was unable to suppress a giggle.

"Oops, I wish I hadn’t revealed that," said Pius #12, "that was to remain a deep dark secret."

"I was strong and did not revere the fraulines to the extent Hitler did," he continued, reverting back to a more serious mien. As he said this an Aura became visible and began to brighten about his head. Jim was practically basking in the glow of self-righteous purity that his Holiness was apparently feeling at this moment, presumably with regards to his having had a normal attitude towards women, at least as compared to that of Adolph Hitler.

"What can you tell me about ‘Opus Dei?" asked Jim, looking to change the subject.

"Opus Dei?" repeated Pius #12.

"Yes , Opus Dei, the organization that advocates self-flagellation in the name of Christianity, and what about the ‘Cilis’, that spiked chain that members of this organization wear around their upper thigh." "Cilis?" repeated Pius #12, as he surreptitiously moved his right hand placing it above his right thigh, where he sought to massage and scratch the area in question.

"How can perversion in the name of religion be compatible with God’s plan?" asked Jim.

Heaving a sigh, Pius #12 raised his arms, he brought his hands together and lacing his fingers placed his upraised hands behind his head. He looked directly at Jim, standing at the foot of the bed. His eyes were dark and penetrating.

"You may wonder like so many others about the imperfections of this world," said his Holiness. "The common response to all of this is to blame the Devil for all the bad things that happen" Pius #12 raised his right hand in anticipation of Jim’s attempt to interrupt him, in order to steer the conversation back to the topic of Opus Dei. "The chaos and imperfections that are part of this world, is God’s way of purifying His spiritual self," he continued. "By allowing his physical creations, including me and thee, free will, God allows his spiritual self to purge itself of the negative energy contained within it." "You mean that our bad deeds as well as our good deeds would all be furthering God’s plan," said Jim, suddenly feeling in a confessional mood. "Bad deeds are a necessary part of furthering God’s plan," said Pius #12.

"I’ve always sought to give people ample chance to do good by me so as to be able to score points with God," said Jim. "I figured this would work to our mutual benefit. People didn’t exactly jump at the chance to take advantage of my offer though," he added, recounting all the opportunities he’d afforded some of his well-off, but as it turned out, cheap relatives, to give him things and make life easier for him. "In that case God’s plan was furthered by your relatives’ selfish behavior towards you. In your own small way you have contributed to God’s plan to rid His eternal universal consciousness of negative psychic energy, as have we all in greater or smaller amounts." At this point the image of Pius #12 appeared to fade and loose its three-dimensional aspect. Just as it was on the verge of disappearing from view, Jim managed to blurt out, "Your Holiness, how do I manage to enter the next higher dimension and find ultimate happiness--, find Nirvana?" "Just do your thing, whatever makes you happy and hold on to that thought." The last garbled words coming from the now disembodied voice of Pius #12 were, ‘photon-sphere’—‘black hole’ and a couple of four digit numbers, which became etched into Jim’s conscious memory. Still pondering over Pius’ last words of advice, Jim snapped out of his trance as the ‘fasten seat belt’ and ‘prepare for landing’ command, issued over the plane’s intercom. He glanced over towards his pretty Guyaneese seat mate, as he straightened the back-rest and fastened his seat-belt. She turned towards him and smiled as she adjusted her seat-belt around her narrow waist. Damned, but she was pretty, thought Jim, as he recounted her various attributes. Her light tan coloring appealed to him, as did her dark, wavy, shoulder length hair and firm round bosom. Her bare legs were slender and shapely.

As he stood behind her in the line-up of passengers waiting to disembark, Jim became further aroused by the way her short blue skirt clung to the curvature of her hips and rounded buttocks. "I’m Una," said the Guyaneese girl to Jim as they stood side by side outside the airport roadway, waiting for transportation to the one and only tourist resort hotel located in the village of the tiny Caribbean island to which the plane had brought them.

The airport taxi proceeded to drive them to the hotel along a winding coastal road.

"Looks like the surfs up," said Jim, as they were able to catch glimpses of the foam-crested ocean, between clumps of Palm trees and tropical foliage that extended from the side of the road to the sandy beach below.

"I can’t wait to get into the ocean," said Una.

"Why don’t we check it out after lunch. I’m thinking of renting a wave runner. It should be fun in this surf. There will be room enough for the both of us, if your game enough to come along," said Jim. "I’m game," was her reply.

By evening they were ravenously hungry from the afternoon’s activity. They made plans over dinner. Later that evening Jim asked Una to join him in his hotel suite. She proved to be an able lover and as inventive and accomplished as she had been earlier that afternoon. "By the way?" asked Una, as they lay on their backs, side by side, upon the large luxurious bed, "are you still looking for that Nirvana place that you mentioned earlier on the plane?" "What I experienced today with you, is definitely my idea of Nirvana," was Jim’s response, as he reached out for her hand under the sheet that covered them.

With Una asleep beside him, Jim reflected upon the advice he had received while in a trance from his deceased, distant cousin, Pius #12. Just before dropping off to sleep, the words ‘photon-sphere’ and ‘black hole’, the meaning of which had so puzzled him earlier, suddenly fell into place.

Jim having returned from his Caribbean Island vacation, was back at his job at the Remote Viewing Section of the CIA complex in Langley Virginia.

"The coordinates are 4651 and 1298," said George, who was seated across a table from Jim in a sound-proof, featureless room, where he was monitoring Jim’s remote viewing session. George had a square-jawed face with intense blue eyes and a serious look about him. Jim ignored the coordinates given to him by George. He chose instead the two four digit numbers Pius #12 had divulged to him at the end of his message, and which Jim took to be his designated target. Suddenly, George and the room around him including the table and everything he knew to be his surroundings, were gone and he found himself floating in, and surrounded by a field of intensely brilliant electromagnetic energy. This energy along with Jim’s subconscious was orbiting an extremely dense object. This black hole object had curved the fabric of space-time, thus funneling electromagnetic energy radiating from various sources in its neighborhood of space, including the Earth, onto itself. Once captured by the black hole’s gravity field, the energy orbited the black hole, thus becoming part of its surrounding photon-sphere.

Jim was close to entering the controlled remote viewing state of ‘bilocation’. He was about to enter into a world of ‘virtual reality’, when the words "you are bilocating," penetrated his conscious mind, bringing him back to the viewing room.

"You were bilocating," said George, whose job it was to keep Jim from entering the state of virtual reality, and experiencing the target fully. For in this state, he would not be aware of the monitor, nor be able to write or draw anything relating to his experience. "You’ve not written or drawn anything," said George, referring to the pen and blank sheet of paper that lay on the table in front of Jim. Good old George, a nice enough guy but such a stickler for protocol, thought Jim to himself.

"Maybe we should take a short break," Jim suggested to his monitor. "I’d like to just sit here for a few minutes and gather my thoughts. Why don’t you go for a coffee, and bring one back for me," he added, looking to get George out of the way, so as to minimize his interfering with the session. As soon as George had left the room, Jim concentrated on the same coordinates as he had before. In an instant his subconscious was whisked back into the black hole’s photon-sphere. Suddenly an aqua-marine colored outline appeared before him. The outline opened into a sea-green tunnel of water. He found himself seated on a wave runner, speeding along the trough of a large wave, the crest of which was breaking 15 feet or so above their heads as they sought to escape the breaking wave to emerge at the other end of the watery tunnel. For there were now two of them. Jim was aware of Una straddling him, sitting in his lap, facing him, both of them star naked upon the wave runner. The wall of tepid water breaking over and spraying them as it rolled towards the beach, shielded their nakedness from the onlookers on shore. Just as it had happened two weeks ago, while vacationing on a tiny Caribbian island, they completed their love making as Jim guided the wave runner up onto the shore of a deserted stretch of beach covered with Palm trees and tropical vegetation. They retrieved their swim suits, which they had secured to the wave runner, and hurriedly got into them. It was the most enjoyable sex, Jim had ever experienced, and here in the photon-sphere orbiting a black hole he was able to relive this or any other pleasurable experience as contained within his past thoughts. For these focused thoughts as contained within patterns of electromagnetic energy and comprising part of the the black hole’s photon-sphere, would keep orbiting the black hole for a very long time. Jim was brought back to his present surroundings, by the sound of his monitor plunking a Styrofoam cup filled with coffee down on the table beside him.

"Thanks George," he said. Reaching into his pocket, Jim came up with a hand full of change which he handed to George. "I seem to have worked up a bit of an appetite just sitting here gathering my thoughts," said Jim, "would you mind very much fetching me a donut to go along with this coffee? And whatever happens, good or bad, it’s all part of God’s plan," he added, recalling the words of his distant cousin, Pius#12. George turned on his heal, pocketing the change. Muttering something under his breath he exited, leaving Jim alone in the viewing room once again, chuckling to himself.

The End

Carl has been writing short stories (Sci.Fi.) and poetry for the last four years or so. We has had four stories published on Stonegarden Magazine’s web-site and two poems published on poetry.com’s web-site (USA). He has had three poems published on the W3PXPoetryExchange web-site (UK). He has a B.Sc. from Mcgill University, Montreal (1960) and is a member of a local writers group in Victoria.