"If you will permit it, I can teach you to know what you know," Jigme translated, as Tseten deftly picked up Adam's sapphire ring and slid it back onto his hand. Turning that hand upward, the old man slowly began to trace a decreasing spiral in the palm with the tip of his right index finger.
"You need not fear." Jigme's words were a soothing caress. "Rinpoche says you have the ability to resist his direction, but he prays that you will not, so that he may guide you to a higher level of consciousness."
The old lama's touch and the spiralling circle being traced on his palm were drawing Adam into trance. Almost without his volition, he could feel the tension draining out of his body, as if Tseten somehow had opened a tap. To either side of him, he sensed concern tensing McLeod and Peregrine, but he paid them no mind; he had nothing to fear from the master before whom he sat, and to whom he now yielded up his will.
"Grant me your teaching, Master," he whispered, lifting his gaze squarely to Tseten's. "I give you leave to guide me wherever I must go."
The spiralling on his palm ended with a brief caress. Taking both Adam's hands in his, Tseten gently folded them together, palm to palm, in an attitude of prayer, and held them in his own. As Adam closed his eyes, a sensation of calm expectancy stole over him, a centering and slipping into familiar patterns of quiescent readiness.
The old lama's hands left Adam's as he softly began to chant, Jigme's voice also joining in.
"Om mani peme hum! Om mani peme hum! Om mani peme hum…"
The familiar mantra lulled and reassured, enjoining surrender in the blissful contemplation of the lotus-jewel of compassion, a heady melding of self with the Supreme All-ness that shaped the universe. Reinforced by a faint clicking that Adam dimly identified as Tseten's rosary beads, the quietly reiterating syllables filled the surrounding air with hypnotic resonances.
Breathing deeply, Adam let those resonances wash over him in waves, carrying him out of the phenomenal world and into the interior realm of a profound, free-floating trance. At first that realm was void, and without form. But then, across that interior void, the blended voices of the two holy men moved like an echo of the first syllable of creation.
A spark of pure, unbroken light appeared in the darkness behind Adam's closed eyelids, vital as a newborn sun. As his inner vision yearned toward it, the heart of that sun exploded, flooding the void with a particle-storm of polychrome radiance. Colors of the metaphysical spectrum spiralled round him in a corona of many-colored lights.
With his next indrawn breath, the corona flowed into his body, circulating throughout his entire being. The chain of braided lights penetrated every nerve with vital, tingling energy. In an instant of revelation, he perceived the colors in their true light, manifold expressions of the sixfold classes of sentient beings.
The black strand represented the creatures of the purgatorial realm. The red one stood for the yidag and mi-ma-yin, the lesser spirits; the green for the tudo, the animal world. The realm of men was represented by the yellow strand, that of the hlamayin, or greater spirits, by the blue. Encompassing and crowning them all, as origin and source, was the purity of white, the imperial aura of primordial awareness, subordinating all lesser colors to itself in timeless unity.
The corona flowed out of his body on his exhaled breath, but each successive cycle of respiration renewed the pattern, simultaneously experienced and perceived. As his concentration deepened, Adam became aware that the chain of lights was lengthening. With each successive cast, it seemed to draw him out of himself in ever-expanding reaches of consciousness till at last he became at one with the chain.
The instant of complete assimilation was accompanied by a sudden shift in the fabric of the cosmos. Though Jigme's voice continued to drone the syllables of the mantra, Adam heard Tseten's voice not through ears but through heart, through soul, speaking the transcendental language of the Inner Planes.
Unthinkable, unchangeable, the great perfection of Wisdom… unborn, unceasing, in essence like the sky… self-arisen, enlightened awareness knowing each and all… I bow before the Mother of all Buddhasl
The origin of the chain of being withdrew, contracting in a spiral toward the star-point whence it had come. Obedient to the promptings of his guide, Adam divested himself of all imagistic ties with the material world. Anchored now only by the silver cord of his present lifetime, he joined the spiral recession toward the birthpoint of the universe. As the wheel of the cosmos drew him ever closer toward the heart of that original light, Tseten spoke to him again, mind to mind and soul to soul.
Open to me, O Seeker, and receive the Transmission.
In a timeless moment of eternity, Adam found himself recalling all his manifold past lives, many yet unexamined and even unguessed in ordinary consciousness. Here, each was like a separate strain of melody, blended together with its counterparts in patterns of complex harmony.
To that intrinsic symphonic unity now was added a new strain, plucked from Tseten's own being. Adam trembled, but not with fear, as the new music was introduced and brought into accord with the pre-existent motifs, pairing note with note and theme with theme until his very being resonated with augmented sound. The voice of his guide made itself heard against a background of diminishing crescendos.
The many forms of knowledge are merely kindred aspects of Wisdom, he was told, different tunes played on the same set of strings. The art of the performer lies in the ability to transpose, adapting one form to another. Remember then, that Wisdom is a unity, and do not be afraid. For what you know, you know in the essence of the Truth….
Watching from either side of Adam, themselves lulled into stillness by Jigme's continued low chanting and the faint click of Tseten's rosary beads, McLeod and Peregrine could only guess at Adam's inner vision. Adam himself remained almost frighteningly motionless, hardly breathing, eyes closed and dark head slightly bowed, apparently oblivious to his surroundings. He did not react as Tseten leaned forward to loop the rosary beads over his head, still chanting.
The movement roused both McLeod and Peregrine to greater watchfulness, but did not seem threatening. But then, as Tseten reached behind his back, a flash of metal emerging in his hand, Peregrine could not suppress a gasp. A Phurba now lay in the old monk's hands.
Peregrine's first instinct was to interpose himself between the blade and the helpless Adam, or at least to cry out a warning. To his dismay, he found himself incapable of doing either. Beyond Adam, McLeod seemed similarly immobilized, blue eyes wide behind the aviator spectacles. Paralyzed, both men could only look on in growing apprehension as Tseten began to roll the hilt of the Phurba between his palms, point down, precisely the way the man had done who had killed Michael Scanlan.
As the words of Tseten's chant shifted, Jigme fell silent, head bowed. Light flashed from the turning Phurba blade, and Tseten's voice rose and fell in a rhythmic singsong that both caressed and commanded. Somehow the new chant did not alarm, though Peregrine thought he should be alarmed; Adam did not seem to be concerned, but nor did he seem aware of what was taking place.
Tseten's chanting continued for several minutes, then suddenly stopped. In the pregnant silence that followed, broken only by the distant screech of a sea gull, the old lama bowed low to the Phurba and touched its pommel lightly to his forehead, throat, and heart-chakra. Straightening then, he shifted the hilt of the weapon into his right hand and reached out to touch the triangular blade to the crown of Adam's head. Though Adam's eyes remained closed, the touch brought him upright, straight-backed, inhaling deeply, as if about to speak.