The period of silence extended. Seb came close to shouting to break it. ‘Well?’
‘Do you have anything to drink?’
‘No!’ Seb slapped his hands against his thighs. ‘How can you even consider alcohol? I thought you’d died.’
‘Have you read my book yet?’
‘No, I haven’t even looked at it. Let’s just say I’ve had other things on my mind.’
Ewan attempted to shake his head, dismissively, upon the pillow that was looking unhealthily dark since his head had been upon it. He winced and kept still. ‘We can exist in another place.’
Silence resumed its frustrating command of the room.
‘And?’
‘If you’ve never sunk in the dark room and risen in white light, you won’t understand. Nor believe that it’s possible.’
‘Let’s just say my scepticism is on pause right now. So what is this? Some kind of . . . I don’t know, ritual magic, or hypnosis—’
Ewan didn’t like speculation, or any attempt at a definition that wasn’t his own. ‘This has got nothing to do with magic.’ He said magic as if the very word disgusted him. ‘What’s magic? Magic doesn’t exist. And I don’t have any time for any of your intellectualism either. Not for this. You don’t know this. It has nothing to do with religious dogma either. It’s different.’
‘So no magic, nothing spiritual –’
‘I didn’t say it wasn’t spiritual. It has nothing to do with organized religion, but it is spiritual. That’s exactly what it is. But the religious can’t handle it, not any more. They’re incapable of accepting the truth.’
‘This is a psychic thing?’
‘Hardly. That barely begins to explain it. That’s like one itty-bitty piece of an incredible fresco on a ceiling above us all, but one that no one can see, in the most beautiful cathedral. A tiny piece that has fallen to the floor of this . . .’ He looked about himself at the tastefully styled room, but in revulsion. ‘Do you remember any of the poetry you read, at uni? You did the same courses as me. He hath awakened from the dream of life! You know that?’
‘Shelley.’
‘No sudden heaven nor sudden hell for man.’
Seb shook his head.
‘Oh, dear, the writer . . .’ Ewan rolled his eyes and intended to continue in that vein, but noticed Seb stiffen. ‘Dearie, dearie me,’ Ewan muttered instead, and then said, ‘Tennyson. And the poets had more idea than anyone else, especially Blake. This has to be felt, deeply. There has to be faith.
‘A man called Heindel tried to define it. Tried to describe the enlargement, the growing, that can take place in our awareness. He argued that because we exist physically in time and space, we can only recognize ourselves in that same time and space. But imagine shedding the physical body, the vehicle, and the time and space that imprison us physically, to become a double in another place, one nearby, that has no time or space. Imagine projecting into a place that intersects this one.’
Ewan sighed when he saw the look of incredulity grow on Seb’s face. He closed his eyes. ‘It’s hopeless. I’m tired.’
‘I’m still intrigued.’
Ewan moved higher up the bed, using an elbow. ‘It’s all in my book.’
‘Pretend that you’re pitching your book. Every book needs a pitch.’
Ewan scowled, then seemed to lack the energy to sustain the expression. ‘The body . . .’ He looked at his own as if such an appraisal was a subject unworthy of consideration. ‘The body is a prison cell. Once you know . . . once you understand that, you can have nothing but contempt for the body. Inside them we don’t even know what it is to be alive. You’re only really alive when you leave your body. That’s the irony, but you cannot believe the potential we have.’
Ewan frowned as if confronted by an infant. ‘Let me make it simpler for you. Imagine if all of your sadness and pain, everything that troubles you, all of it, anxiety, grief, disappointment, anger, were to go. Imagine how you would feel if all of the misery of being alive just fell from you. You can’t. Because you’ve never projected. You can’t imagine the ecstasy. To become so strong, like you cannot believe. Powerful. You’re suffused with . . .’