14.1 Journey of Ascension

In the height of the short summer, potatoes did bring no bloom, berries and mushrooms were not ripe. It was cold and the stove kept them warm. Mosquitoes and midges in masses roamed the houses. In the white nights, he thought about his family. He was cutting logs and the taiga shrunk to grow smaller. At the end of the summer, they harvested berries and mushrooms from hummock to hummock. He drank water from under the driftwood and jumped into the Yenisei in a fearless folly of courage. He had to earn a ruble to survive in this nature and all he needed were bread and fire log. At his age, he was merely coping and forgotten to breathe from his nostrils. In the evolving future, a snout could become needless and scent extinct from senses, his speech becoming useless as time passed, his touch frozen to the fingers.

In August, Tyler joined a steamer heading to the permafrost in the Arctic Circle to the icy dawn. It was full moon, bright and red under an unblinking moon-like sun in the northern sky. Incredible winds and blizzards in the severe frost hindered a difficulty to overcome. Mode of transport done on sledges driven by fluffy laikas with the Lithuanian at the helm.

Back in Turukhansk, then it was October, Tyler could remember, the land was covered with snow. He ran into the taiga at midday. Out of the blue, Tyler caught a bright white star bigger than a volleyball that looked like a stellar plate and branched to form ice dendrites. It was so white and bright but there was no light spreading, his eyes hurting utmost. As he watched, it switched off as if it imploded inwards to its nucleus and there was nothing in the ambient sky. Simultaneously, he saw a figure of a snowy woman standing vertically elevated a metre above the snowcapped land. His vision was blurred with a blind spot hung in his eyes from an overexposure to the ball of light. A snowy woman; he meant because it looked like an ice sculpture with bluish shadows and swollen lips toned dark blue. Then a waft got caught around the hip growing bigger and bigger in a whirlpool like a spherical disc. The figure was thin and unclothed, with short hair and a long torso. Those laikas long forgotten to bark began to howl. Brusquely, the spectre of the cold front disappeared in a blink of an eye.

Settlers of Mangazeya called it ‘Angel Zhelaniya’ – a phenomenal occurrence often sighted in the tundra – in the Land of the Midnight Sun.

Tomam and Erkin narrated a different version of ‘Baba Yaga’ to put fear in the eyes of children; a ferocious woman who flies around in a mortar, wielding a pestle, eats children and lives in a hut with chicken legs.

Winter grew harsh and tedious. He could sledge out into the emptiness miles and miles out in the frozen Yenisei. A long story shortened from the chapters of his book, ‘Merkabah’, published in 1967. Tyler Friesen came across several sightings and wrote broadly of the events. One hopeless nasty day, he was digging the ice to catch fish when he saw a frosty pillar beaming towards the sky and a layer of grey cloud engulfed in a panorama of cold mist. His fears elapsed since he had forgotten to exist in the surrounding strange land, nothing standing between and nowhere to run. He turned stone cold.

It was a letter posted in the Lithuanian’s mail to a friend in Moscow that reached Sandra Friesen first. And the letters she sent remained in the Ministry of Interior at Krasnoyarsk throughout the winter of 1965.

Into the sixteenth breath, a spinning disc formed around her spine extending over 55 feet in diameter. It was wobbling in the energy matrix and the surrounding disappeared in her eyes.

Grass covered the courtyard in vibrant green in the month of August and cloudy in a bright blue sky. She stood pinpointed under the conical dome inside the 13^th century church dedicated to Surb Astvatsatsin – the Holy Mother of God. Stone pillars in bas-relief and structural arches supporting the vaulted ceiling composed entirely of basalt. Narrow windows with bell style arches placed at every cardinal direction, one at the south end flanked by Bolnisi style crosses.

Charragayt Shogh had been long preparing for the journey according to the esoteric preachings of the Kabbalah mysticism that she was actively practising. Not everyone could achieve its objectives. It was meant for a selected few. When it sprang to a quick jump, she had to discipline herself, stop the shisha and other habits, go on a strict diet, genital bath, fasting, meditation and exercise emotionally and physically on a pulling down procedure and breathing technics in order to generate the energies required to expand the aura of a person that couldn’t be seen but a feature that existed in man. It is located in the middle of the lower chest and more visible from the front of the body while it’s not a part of the physical body.

Merkabah means chariot in ancient Hebrew, also it translates as a ‘vehicle to ride’. Most closely associated with the vision in the first chapter of the book of Ezekiel in the Old Testament of the four-wheeled vehicle driven by heavenly beings with the likeness of a man – that of a man, a lion, an ox and an eagle, facing four directions and each with wings. Beneath, wheels appeared unattached to the vehicle with wheels within the wheels that could carry it in any direction as a sign of God’s omnipresence.

The word Merkabah is composed of three bases; Mer – light, Ka – spirit, Bah – body.

A Merkabah consists of layers of etheric energy intertwined around each other in a way that forms a tight matrix. As more layers develop, it grows larger and more spherical. After a few months of development, it appears as a sphere of light around the person about six to seven feet in diameter. After a year or two, more layers add to expand its size in shape of an egg about twenty feet in diameter. It cannot be seen to the naked eye unless he or she has special abilities to see subtle energy. If a man can perceive, it appears as a radiant sphere. It grows so large that one can’t see it around a person because it’s far away from the source of emission.

The Merkabah interacts with the ether field that exists around the body and space. It acts as a transducer of etheric energy which means this structure can extract energies from other subtle sources. It combines opposing energies in perfect balance and this union results in an activation of light and protection around your body that can transport your consciousness to higher dimensions. In a greater sense, with sufficiently developed layers, it is able to transport not only the soul but the bearer with it. According to the Old Testament, Enoch and Ezekiel took their bodies to Heaven using the power of Merkabah.

In September, the colours of Tsaghkadzor valley shifted to a rich autumn array with a fall in temperature. As September bid farewell, it ushered in the crisp air and golden hues of October. No leaves on the branches left to fall outside the monastery. Her mind was clear, her soul cleansed and washed from sins. If someone spotted her at this posture, she was elevated above ground immersed in a complex bright white light.

In nine-tenths of the speed of light, it stabilised the rotating field, every electron revolved around every atom in her body in the seventeenth breath, and exhale…

Into the eighteenth breath, she vanished into the mist of the dense white light that filled the cupola at Surb Astvatsatsin.