The Greatest Spiritual Secret of the Century (18 page)

His favorite table by the window was empty, so he sat down and put his coat over the chair next to him. Out on the street, a steady stream of people moved purposefully in the cold, late afternoon air. He focused on them, trying to anchor himself in the reality of the moment so he could let go of his dream of Mary, of sleeping beside her, of the smell of her hair, the sound of her night-voice, the touch of her lips. She came to the table, a pad now in her hand, and said, “Late lunch or early dinner?”

“Both, I guess. How have you been?”

She brushed a loose strand of hair off her forehead. “Okay. Studying like crazy.” She was wearing jeans and a brown tee-shirt with Geronimo on the front over the words “No Fear.”

“Abnormal psych?”

She tilted her head slightly, her eyebrows pulled together. “I told you already?”

“Just a guess,” he said.

“There's something weird,” she said, then hesitated.

“Weird?”

“I'll have to get my purse. It's in the back.” She turned around and walked off toward the kitchen. Paul watched her with a glow in his chest and turbulence in his stomach. It had seemed so real. He wanted her, and he wanted
the mission Joshua had given him. Moving from one big corporation to another, even for vastly more money, would never give him the sense of mission and purpose he'd known when he'd decided to take on Joshua's work, to spread the word,
to save the world.
Yet now…

Mary came back from the kitchen, a small green spiral-bound notepad in her hand. It was similar to the one Paul used to take notes when he was working a story. She said something to Diana, the other waitress, and then pulled out the chair opposite his and sat down. Her face had a serious expression, as if she were worried or embarrassed.

“I don't know how to say this, because it's gonna sound crazy…” she said, putting the notepad on the table between them, her voice trailing off as Paul reached for it.

Paul recognized it as his from the little doodle on the comer of the cover, an aimless drawing he'd done a week earlier while waiting, on hold, in his office at the
Trib.
He heard Wisdom in Mary's voice, and willed his hands to not tremble as he lifted the cover of the pad and saw written in his own handwriting on the first page,
The teachings of the Wisdom School…

Mary said, “It's got your name on the back cover.” She turned it over, and there was
Paul Abler
and his phone number at the
Trib
printed in his neat block lettering.

He dropped the cover as if it were hot and put his hands together on the table. “Did you read any of it?”

She looked down at her hands on the table and put her fingers together as if in prayer. “Yes. I know it was wrong of me, but I did.” She looked up at him. “It's remarkable what you've written there. Reading it gave me an odd sense of déjà vu. Like it's all about things that I once knew but then forgot…like I was born knowing it but as I grew up I had to push it aside.” She reached out and put a fingertip on the back of his hand, sending a thrill through him. “I didn't realize you had an interest in these kinds of things.”

“I've taken on a job,” he said, not needing to explain it further. She pulled back her hand and he felt a sense of loss. He added, “You said something would sound crazy?”

“How I got it,” she said. “I found this in my apartment this morning. It was half under the sofa, half out.” I have no idea how it got there. Honest to God, I didn't find it here and take it home or anything like that. I'm sure I didn't. It was just
there
”

“With your cat Igor?”

Her eyes got wide, then narrow. “You been stalking me or something? Is this some kind of a joke?” She sat up straighter in the chair. “Did you break into my apartment and leave this?”

“No, not at all,” Paul stammered. “Probably I left it here, you picked it up and put it in your pocket without
thinking about it, and it fell out there.” He glanced around, struggling to find the right words to say to reassure her; whenever he lied he always felt like everybody knew it instantly. Among the bustling people outside the window, he recognized the homeless man digging through the trash at the comer of Eighth Avenue. “Jim!” he said out loud.

Mary looked out the window and said, “The homeless guy?”

“Yeah, I think I know him.”

“He's a regular,” she said, her tone sad. “I almost got fired for letting him use the bathroom once.”

“I know,” Paul said. He stood up. “Come with me.”

She stood up, a confused and concerned expression on her face. “What is going on here?”

“We've got to talk to Jim.”

“Are you nuts?”

“Maybe.” He took her arm gently, holding her. “Everything is okay and I'm not a stalker or anything like that. But I think Jim may know how that notebook ended up in your apartment.”

She glanced over at Diana, who was moving at double-speed to take care of both of their tables. “I have to get back to work. Really I do. There's only a half-hour left on my shift, and I can't use it to goof off if I want to keep my job. You have your notebook, and when you figure out how it got in my apartment, please let me know.”

She pulled away from his grip and marched over to a table on the other side of the room, order pad at the ready.

Paul, at a loss for words, watched her go, then grabbed his notebook, spun around, and ran out the door, leaving his coat behind on the chair. Jim was digging through a near-full garbage can, a round mesh contraption chained to the streetlight post, dropping cans into a burlap sack.

“Jim?” Paul said.

The man stopped, straightened up, and turned to look at Paul. “Do I know you?” he said.

“Do you know Joshua?”

Jim smiled wide. “Of course.”

“And Matt, and Pete, and Salome, and Mark, and Juan?”

“You're talking about my family,” Jim said. He tilted his head an inch to the right. “Who are you, nice clothes but looking like you just left a dogfight?”

“Joshua can heal people, right?”

“Who
are
you?”

“I'm Paul, and I know Joshua from another time and place.”

“And that time and place is?”

Paul searched about his mind for a moment, then said, “'Wisdom has built Her house, and has hewn Her seven pillars.”'

Jim stepped back and looked Paul up and down. “He told us to expect you. But you're not what I expected.”

“I'm not what
I
expected,” Paul said. “Can you take me to see Joshua? In the tunnels?”

Jim nodded slowly. “It's a work that's easy to get into, but nearly impossible to leave.”

“Why?”

“Would you leave The One?”

“Never,” Paul said with conviction.

“But you gotta know we ain't some kind of cult. Joshua is just another person, just like you and me. He's right up front about that. He says that if anybody tells you they got some secret teaching from some invisible or hidden being or some group of secret teachers, then you should run in the other direction cause that's the game the phonies always run to get people to follow them, bow to them, be impressed by them. Jesus was totally transparent, his life was right out there for everybody to see. He answered everybody's questions, had no secrets and no secret teachers. Same with Moses, Mohammed, Buddha, all of them. If you think this is one of them cults where only one guy knows who or where some secret teachers are, or what some secret truths are, then you're in for a disappointment.”

“I understand,” Paul said. “The One isn't Joshua. It's
everything, everybody. You, me, and,” he pointed to a businessman crossing with the light, “that guy there. Although he may not yet realize it.”

Jim nodded. “Yeah, you understand. You ready to go now?”

Paul looked down at his once-pressed jeans and white shirt, over at his apartment building two blocks up the street, back at the restaurant. The world is in flames and crisis, he thought, and a spiritual disconnection is at its core. There are people walking around right here and now with the answers.

He took a deep breath, smelling auto exhaust, fresh-baked bread, and the cigarette smoke from a passer-by. The air chilled him without his coat. He only had about fifty dollars in his pocket. Yet he knew he had completed the first part of his training.

Was he ready to join Joshua in taking the Secret to the world? To give the energy of his life over to saving the world?

He imagined himself receiving the Pulitzer Prize and realized it was irrelevant to him now. Nothing less than the survival of life itself, of every human and every other living thing on Earth, was at stake.

“You okay?” Jim said.

“Yeah,” Paul said, “but I have somebody I'd like to bring with me.”

“The more the merrier.”

“Can you meet me back here in twenty-four hours? Same time, same place?”

Jim smiled. “I can do that.”

“Promise?”

“Cross my heart,” Jim said. He reached out and lightly squeezed Paul's arm “I got a feeling that you're a friend.”

“More than you know,” Paul said, putting his hand over Jim's for a moment.

Back inside the restaurant, Paul looked at the menu, then slipped it between the sugar dispenser and the napkin holder to his left. Mary came to the table, her expression wary but friendly. “Well, did he know anything about the notebook?” she asked.

Paul blinked. He'd almost forgotten. “In a manner of speaking, yes,” he said, “but it's a long story.”

“Paul, it was in
my
apartment. Don't you think you should tell me, no matter how long a story it is?”

Paul smiled. “Absolutely. What are you doing after work?”

She gave him a look that he took as cautious curiosity.

Paul quickly added, “I was just thinking it might be nice to discuss it over dinner. Some place other than here.”

She smiled, a warm smile that reached across her entire face. “You getting food for me? That would be a
change.” She reached behind her neck, found her ponytail, pulled it over her shoulder and smoothed the hair. “I was just gonna walk home and feed my cat.” She reached over and touched Paul's arm, then quickly pulled back her hand. “If I don't do that first, he'll begin to shred the furniture.”

His heart was racing. “Would you like some company?”

“Hey, it's almost forty blocks. I wouldn't ask anybody to walk that far.”

Paul felt his heart sink as he realized he'd lurched into an attempt to explain it without thinking it through first. Maybe he'd even ruined his chance to build a relationship with Mary. He searched for the right words to give her a sense of what had happened without putting her off altogether. How could he explain it all without sounding like a madman? There had to be a way; the best would probably be the truth, starting at the beginning…

“Unless, of course,” Mary added, her eyes sparkling now, “they had something really interesting to tell me…”

Acknowledgments

My first thanks is to my Creator, who gave me life, and my parents who brought me into this world and raised me. And without my wife, Louise, and my brothers, and my children, I doubt I'd be alive today; I love and thank you all.

For this book, particular acknowledgement is held in my heart for the late Og Mandino, who developed the art form of revealing enormous spiritual truths in a novella. Og, wherever you are, I hope that with this offering you'll smile and feel that I have honored and continued your tradition.

History is clear that in a first-century sect of Judaism there was a vast schism between the men and women who had lived and walked with Jesus (Peter, John, Salome, Mary, and the other disciples, referred to by Biblical scholars as “the Jerusalem Church”) and the followers of Paul, who had not met Jesus prior to the crucifixion. Paul's followers won the battle, and later joined with the Roman Empire and became what is now the Roman Catholic Church; but Peter and his group went to great pains to protect the Jerusalem Church's perspective, history, and the original sayings of Jesus. I owe a great debt to the many people over the last five decades who have labored so hard to make available, in English language, the Gospel of Thomas and other early Jerusalem Church writings discovered at Nag Hamadi, and to those from the Jerusalem Church of ancient times who wrote and copied and protected from the conquering Romans so much of that wisdom and knowledge.

As we know from history, in the third and fourth century most of the original Disciple's Jerusalem Church followers were tracked down by the newly-formed “Pauline” Roman Catholic Church, which by then was a state religion. Many from the Jerusalem Church were imprisoned or murdered, but a few were able to hide some of the sayings of Jesus, which they had so carefully transcribed for twenty generations, and through the work of Biblical scholars these are now again available as the Gospel of Thomas. What a gift!

Most of the sayings of Joshua in this book are direct quotes from the Gospels of Thomas, Matthew, or Mark, the presumed oldest books of the early Christian era and heavily influence by the Jerusalem Church of Jesus' original followers.

All of the words spoken by the woman named Wisdom are from the books of Job, Proverbs, Ecclesiastes, and Song of Solomon of the Tenach, also known as the Old Testament. They are among the few places in the Bible where divinity speaks in a feminine voice.

I am grateful to those who have shared this wisdom with me over the years, particularly Hillel Zeitlin, Hal Cohen, and Gottfried Müller. My interpretations and representations of these teachings, however, are entirely my own, for better or worse.

This book originated from a suggestion Neale Donald Walsch shared with me one afternoon in February 1999. He encouraged me to write the book and the next day my wife, Louise, and I brainstormed the outline. Neale and his wife, Nancy Walsch, offered brilliant editorial suggestions to the early drafts: they're two of the finest editors I've ever worked with. Without Neale, Nancy, and Louise this book wouldn't exist, and I am deeply grateful to them all for helping bring it from the realm of idea to the realm of the printed page. Bob Friedman of Hampton Roads also deserves many, many thanks for his role in producing this book.

Scott Berg, Anne Roberts, Julie Castiglia, Tim King, Kerith Hartmann, Jean Houston, Jerry Schneiderman, Rob Kall, Tammy Nye, Hal Cohen, Jill Gatsby, and Gwynne Fisher read early drafts and provided significant encouragement.

Margaret Morton, although we have never met, inspired me by writing and photographing her brilliant book
The Tunnel
(Yale University Press) about the people who lived under the streets of Manhattan until the Giuliani administration stepped up its war on the homeless. Robert Funk, who wrote
Honest To Jesus
and other works, enlightened me considerably through his research and literary works, as did Elaine Pagels through her writings and her speech at Trinity College here in Vermont. I learned much from the truly incredible book
Jesus Untouched by the Church
by Hugh McGregor Ross (published by William Sessions in York, England). I recommend their books to you.

Jerry Schneiderman has been my guide to and through the oddest nooks and crannies of Manhattan for the more than two decades that he's been my best friend.

And many, many thanks to Stephen Corrick, Bill Gladstone, Julie Castiglia, Michael Kurland, and Jerry Gross for their helping me to write and bring to the marketplace the sounds, sights, feelings, and knowings that live in my mind, heart, and soul.