The lost tomb got lost

There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio, than are dreamt of in your philosophy. William Shakespeare



This interview was conducted in Jerusalem where my pilgrimage in Shikoku took me via an 'electric telepathy' received in the ultimate shrine in Japan-that of Ise. It reveals my intense interest in the alleged tomb of Jesus. Since the unveiling of this well crafted documentary, the world has gone silent about what should have been the greatest archaeological buzz in a century. It never happened. One wonders why as this pilgrimage proceeds...

Synchronicity as Nature

It all depends on how we look at things, and not on how they are themselves.

Carl Justav Jung

Years earlier a different pilgrimage had taken me to one of the Gulf islands between the British Columbia mainland and Vancouver island. There I was to undergo a four day vision quest alone on a mountain top. No food, no water, no movement outside a tight square demarcated by tobacco pouches (400 of them I had made the night before) hanging on a string. I was told that the answers to my questions would come via Nature herself, rather than in altered states of consciousness.

Every day a hummingbird would dart right above my head and bathe me in the incredible drone of its super high speed wing beats. Eagles, four of them, visited every afternoon flying low enough that I could see they were definitely looking at me, into me . Even the humble snail who trundled into my tiny enclosure, just big enough to lie down in, had a message of support. Thirst! I thirst! I really understand the meaning of that historic statement at the most basic level.

A rainy day on the Shikoku road had brought me up yet another mountain. The previous day I had made another map navigation mistake due to my pig headed refusal to carefully pore over the highly complex red lines indicating correct routes. They frequently ran through multiple terrains ranging from city downtown mazes to remote mountain recesses. A crow had perhaps tried to alert me right away that I should have turned left at the base of the temple steps. Reading everything backwards I had of course turned right. There on the deserted path hopped a crow. As I approached, knowing he would soon take off as all crows do once their safety distance is breached, I was amazed to see him continue to hop a little ahead but also more slowly than I was approaching him

Within minutes I stood not three paces away from this crow who was surely the most bizarre member of his species I had ever come across. His wings were neatly shorn about 60% of their length down-at first hard to see but once realised as clear as a straight line across a boy's newly hair cut neck. How on Earth had this happened? And why was this crow so uninspired to hop clear away from me? I stood with him a full five minutes aware from my Canadian experiences how synchronicity often occurs through animals, insects and birds. A freak crow blocks my path but only in retrospect would I see what that bird might have been there for. By stopping me for more than five minutes he could have saved me five kilometers of wear and tear on my feet had I recognized my mistake. I did not. Ten minutes later another animal lay in wait. Hmmm..

This was a fairly deserted area with few cars and almost fewer people on foot apart from the odd pilgrim. An odd one like me. There, draped across the middle of the badly surfaced tarmac road was a meter long snake. Apparently dead. Being relatively unconcerned with snakes and knowing that the really poisonous ones in Japan are much smaller, I approached. Again, as with the crow, only when I had come within three paces or so did he move.

Lazily, almost nonchalantly the snake slid over the road's edge into the undergrowth. By now I realised that having walked hundreds of kilometers and never seen two different species in such a short interval cross my path that something was up. I did not however awaken to my navigation error and continued to muse that where there are two there will always be a third. The next day in the rain that third one showed up.

Gloriously alone in the pissing rain of this mountain I got down to 'pilgrim business'. For years I had been struggling with a Catholic idea that had informed my childhood and had become a despised notion as soon as I hit the road. Since I left home basically at seventeen and was in Indian sadhu circles by eighteen, the notion of resurrection had not even faintly touched my soul. What a bloody absurd story!

But I was older now. I had seen and done a lot. Not just in this 'world' either since many Peruvian jungle excursions had seen me blasted out of this apparently solid world, far beyond the concepts of reality that zen should have shaken me free of. But zen I am stubborn. One day on a mountain in Peru I had awakened to my own Christian past and had really felt the presence. The Holy Spirit presence. The love that engulfs all ailing hearts in a revelation of a deeper reality.

Thus did I now consider myself at least on the road to becoming a Christ and so the nagging question of this totally ludicrous story could not be avoided. Of course the question begs why to begin with, would people dream up a ridiculous story in an age when people were spiritually far more sophisticated than we . They had to live in spiritual practise, whether pagan or Jewish or Platonic, much more seriously than we dabblers do now. We can always retreat to the welfare state. For them the only sure retreat was the spirit world, however it was imagined.

In that pouring rain I bawled out the question: " Did Jesus Christ really rise from the dead?" Not two seconds later I was stopped dead in my tracks having almost stepped on the frog in the picture above. Totally motionless he stood erect smack in my path. Lying on the ground to take that picture I looked for signs of life. None. No breathing could be ascertained looking at his knotty skin around the sides. But how can a dead frog stand erect? It is absurd. How could this be? Finally, I patted him on the head, and just as lazily as the crow and the snake had he hopped off to the side. What had appeared to be dead was most certainly alive. An answer or another, deeper riddle?