"We have known this before. We have done this before." He stirred half-and-half into his coffee, turning it a creamy caramel brown. He adjusted his glasses and scratched his nose with his right hand. There was gray stubble showing on his cheeks, and tiny red veins showed on his cheekbones and nose.
"The one story in the Old Testament that is literally true is the Tower of Babel. That is another moment in human history when mankind became aware of its own godly power, and understood that these human forms are really just prisons for rebellious angelic souls."
Outside the coffee shop, it was a cold Oklahoma morning. He pulled a small flask from his jacket pocket, and poured a goodly portion of whiskey into his morning coffee, mixing it in with a spoon. The other people in the coffee shop went about their lives, chatting, enjoying a scone, visiting with friends. No one else paid attention to our conversation.
"So let me get this straight," I started. "You're saying that these bodies, these human forms we walk around in all day, are prisons? Made specifically to harness and restrict the powerful spiritual beings that we truly are? That we all naturally have the power of gods, but these bodies worn by our souls suppress those powers?"
"Exactamente!" he said, sipping from his big, white, coffee mug. "They have good bagels here, would you like one?"
"No thank you," I said, smiling about how he went from profound statements of metaphysical speculation to jabbering about food, and back again.
He sat back down with a toasted sesame bagel and honey pecan cream cheese. "Where was I?" he asked, spreading the cream cheese onto his bagel.
"You were talking about these bodies being prisons for our rebellious souls."
"Right," he said, pointing a cream cheese smeared knife in my direction. "Did you realize that most religious have proscriptions against suicide? You know that because you're a Bible thumper. In Christianity it is a considered a grave sin to commit suicide. Why is that? Have you ever given that any thought?"
"No," I answered truthfully. "But I remember when Gennifer Carn killed herself by sitting on the edge of a bathtub, and shooting herself in the chest with a shotgun. Everybody at work said she was burning in hell forever. I thought, well shit, her old man was screwing around on her, and she was distressed. Why would God condemn her to an eternity in hell for being so heartbroken that she couldn't take it anymore?"
"You get my point, then," he said around a mouthful of bagel. "There is a belief, almost a consensus, that people who commit suicide are committing a crime against God. And that is true. Suicide amounts to a jail break by souls who are trying to shorten their sentence."
A drawn out "ooooohhhhhh" while nodding my head was all I could manage as what he was saying sunk in.
He slurped a shot of whiskey-dosed coffee, and wiped his mouth with the back of his hand. "I am making it sound so dramatic, calling it a prison. In a way that's true, but it's more true that we are living inside a correctional system. This entire world, and all of its inhabitants, are residents of a spiritual penal institution. We are here to have our attitudes adjusted, our behaviors corrected, our understandings expanded, our souls purified through suffering and grief, and also to be glorified by love and sex and close friendships. And dogs. I'm pretty sure dogs make us better, just by hanging around with us."
His service animal, a big yellow lab named Sheffield, looked up at him, grinning. It was like Sheffield understood what he was saying.
Suddenly the coffee shop grew louder as more customers wandered in. He moved closer to the table and leaned across, looking me in the eye. "You ever been dead?" he asked me.
"No, never dead. Had a few hangovers though that made me wish I was dead." He didn't smile.
"I died when I was in the Nam." he said. "I got shot by a machine gun, right through both legs. I remember getting hit, and time just slowed down. I didn't feel any pain. It was like I jumped outside of myself, and watched from a distance as my body went tumbling to the ground. It was like watching a slow motion movie. It felt like I was hovering about four feet above my body, watching as the firefight continued around me. I watched my own eyes glaze over as I bled to death there in a muddy field, with a hot sun beating down on me."
As he described it, I could see the images in my own mind. I could imagine him as a young wounded soldier, laying under a hot sun, dying.
He took another sip of coffee, and his eyes had a smoky, far-away look, as though he wasn't seeing me anymore. "That's when I met the being of love and light. That's how I know what I know."
He went on to describe his experience. First, he said as he watched his body from above, a pinkish gray fog started to surround him, until he could no longer see himself lying on the ground. Then, he said he was rapidly hauled through a long dark valley, which he called "the valley of the shadow of death." At first he was frightened, he said, but then he saw a bright light in the distance rapidly moving toward him. The light grew closer, and brighter. "If I had eyes, I would have been blinded," he said. "But I realized that I was outside my body, and that I was perceiving things without the aid of my body. I could see, but I had no eyes to see. I could hear, but I had no ears to hear."
The bright light came closer until he felt enveloped by it, no longer able to distinguish between where his disembodied self ended, and where the light began. He described a sense of overwhelming peace, and love, and acceptance from the light. He claimed that, without hearing it, the bright light was communicating with him. It told him not to be afraid. "Let's see what you have learned," the light told him. At that moment, his life began passing in front of him very rapidly, and from the time of his earliest memories to the moment he lay dying on the battlefield, he saw every moment of his life. He felt every emotion he had ever felt. Moreover, he said, he could sense the emotions of all the people he had interacted with throughout his life. The hurts he had caused. The pain and anger he had evoked in others by his actions and decisions.
"The being of light wasn't judging me, not like we are told by religion. It wasn't a deal where the being was saying that I sinned, or screwed up, or was evil. Instead, it was like a review of my life with director's commentary. The light was teaching me, telling me what I was learning during each memory we observed. It was kind of like a parole hearing, where the parole board makes you talk about what you have learned, how you have improved, and whether or not you have accepted responsibility for your crimes."
He took another bite of bagel, and I saw the cream cheese smeared on his lips as he chewed. He swallowed and took another drink of his coffee. Breaking a small piece off the bagel, he tossed it toward Sheffield, who expertly snapped the tidbit out of the air as it passed in front of him.
I sat quietly on my side of the booth, waiting for him to resume his colloquy. His eyes had a distant stare, as if he was not aware of my presence. I could tell he was re-living, or perhaps re-dying, his battlefield experience.
Suddenly he looked at me again, and he was present in the moment. "That being of light showed me things, told me things, taught me things, that I never would have been able to know here in this life. Here in this limiting body." He patted his left hand three times over his heart. "It told me that I wasn't ready yet, and that I had more to learn about love. It said I had to go back. I protested that I didn't want to return to my body. I said I wanted to stay with the light, and to continue learning. Believe it or not, the being of light laughed, in kind of a loving and soothing way. It said I would return, and we would be together again. But that my time in this life wasn't finished. All of a sudden, I was back in my body, being dragged through the mud by two of my fellow Marines."
He paused to reach down and stroke Sheffield's head. The dog looked up at him with adoration in its eyes, but also what I sensed to be concern and alertness to my friend's emotions. "Who's a good boy?" my friend said absentmindedly.
"But, how does that lead you to believe these bodies are prisons? That this life is a prison sentence?"
"It's hard to explain," he said. "What I experienced in those few minutes I was dead can't be conveyed in words. Our language is also limiting, just like our bodies. Our language rests upon common sensory experiences that we can all understand. The words we have invented are tied to those experiences of the physical world. What happened to me was not in this physical world, but a world that we would probably call 'spiritual,' except that for me, it was real. As real as you and I sitting here right now. So, without really speaking, the being of light told me, or inserted into my mind, the understanding that this life is like a prison, a school, and a hospital, all rolled into one. We are here being both taught, and corrected. The days we are each allotted are like the term of our prison sentence. We can do nothing to either lengthen or shorten those days. We have to serve our term. We can't escape this."
His plate was empty, save for dozens of toasted sesame seeds that had fallen from his bagel. He stared down at the plate, lost in his own thoughts again. My phone started buzzing in my pocket, reminding me that I had another appointment that I needed to get to. I wished that I could stay and visit with him longer, but he was also becoming restless.
"It was good talking to you, young man," he said, reaching across the table to shake my hand. "I don't often tell these things to people. In fact, you are only about the fourth or fifth person I have ever really talked to in detail about it. But, I feel like I am getting close to the end of my sentence." A wan smile brushed across his lips. "I ain't mad about that."
Just then, Sheffield stood up and moaned, then whined. "Well, my guardian angel is asking to go outside," he said, scooting toward the end of the seat. He reached out and pulled his motorized scooter closer to him. With deft and experienced moves, he lifted himself out of the booth and into the chair. The dog knew how to move out of the way, and once his master was in his chair, the dog stood patiently on the right side of the chair, waiting to leave.
"I appreciate you spending part of your morning with me," I said. "I can say that I have never had a conversation anything like this one, in my entire life."
"You're welcome, son," he said with a smile. "You're going to need that knowledge soon." A little laugh escaped his mouth. "See you around, then," he said, pushing the joystick on his scooter, and motoring quickly away.
I sat stunned, pondering what he meant by his final words.
