As I mentioned my notes were sketchy and unclear. The event itself was more crystalline and real than anything I had ever known before.

And I left with the profound understanding that all the work done by researchers over the years was somehow culminated together here in this luminous sphere. Like Shakespeare’s Globe theatre, the entire whole was encompassed here, in miniature. Like Plato’s Timaeus, the whole live animal was visible to us, somehow both intimated and revealed. Yet we were left to make sense of it in our own limited ways, once the vision of the globe dissolved into ether.

We sat at the table, with our now very heavy earthen objects before us, objects that contained no magic whatsover, for they had been as if drained by their opening and fusing together into light. 

It was as if a conversation had turned into a communion, and from that came rays of being that had never been known on earth before that moment. 

The purpose of our work together was revealed, not as an intrigue or as a defeat of what was blocking the development of the list of active objects or activated cabinets. It was simpler than that, and more meaningful. The revelation showed us that something more was possible, something both ancient and new, and that we were active just for that purpose. 

When it was over, no one discussed it. Each of us returned to our rooms and began our accounts of the events leading up to this communion. Our research training gave us the ability to write these down before they disappeared from memory, even though they had dissolved from view. 

Like the objects, we too were drained, but relying on our critical training at this time, we were all able to give account for the next few weeks. In fact we all stayed in our rooms as if on retreat, and food was brought to us. No one went into the common lounge areas, no one went to the dining room. The entire seatemple inn appeared closed for the season. The sign outside had been turned off, a no vacancy list had been put on the website, and the lapping of the sea on the shoreline was the only rhythm matched by the rising of the moon, at which time the accounts were all almost completed. I thought I may have been the only researcher left in the world, the place was so quiet. But I heard others showering, or humming, or pacing the halls, and once or twice calling out, ‘That’s it!” Or “Exactly!” Then, returning to their accounts. Food left at the door and trays left in the hall were punctuated by the sounds of the sea, drawing the pebbles back and forth with the waves. 

At full moon, the great windstorm began, and all of us researchers could have been seen standing at our windows, looking out at the sea and her turmoil. Mirroring our own interior readjustment, having been transfixed and transfigured by the view of the Great Living Globe of which we were somehow mysteriously a part, was the sea, the moon, our emotions and our hearts. Our understandings were wiped away by this process. A new memory system was in play, one that was somehow more attuned to the future than to the past. 

We had brought through the next level of our work, and could look forward to a peaceful time in which the work written could be assembled into a form that others might see. 

At the end of the session, just at the end of the writing, I saw something that had somehow escaped my memory, and my notations. It was simple, just a small roughly rounded marble, rolling off the table onto the floor beneath my feet. I bent to pick it up and placed it in front of me. That is when I noticed that the others had also done the same, and each had a little crystal sphere in front of them. It reflected their faces back to them. At least mine did. Like the pupil of an eye. I was transfixed. 

Now in my room,  I rummaged through my clothes to find the sweater with pockets, and there it was, I had brought it back with me after all. I held it and rolled it between my fingers. It was cool and smooth, and seemed to almost have a sweetish scent. Placed it before me as I rewrote the ending to my account to be sure to include it.Then there was a sudden power outage, all lights were gone. Heat was gone. Silence pervaded even more deeply. The moon was still full, and the tops of the waves shone bright white, little horses. 

The moon descended to the shore, rolled toward the inn. Shone into the windows like a spotlight. We all stood there each in our own room looking to the miraculous moon, which drew us to the balcony, to the wind and active night energies. We all just stood there, then turned and ran through our rooms, out the doors into the hallways and down stairs to the main doors leading to the garden through to the sea. She was waiting for us there. We found ourselves aligning, walking single file, then double, then triple as we went to the moon standing on the sea. No one waded past the shoreline, but we felt as if we did. We lifted up a little, then fanned out in a semicircle facing her. Each held their crystal sphere at the level of navel, and the light it emitted was like the umbilical cord. A laser to the moon. Wind blew upon these lines and they began to sing the sweet long tones of life and her longing. We saw one another’s faces, we knew what was happening, we couldn’t make it happen any faster, nor could we stop it. The moon came nearer as she rose direcly above us and we formed a circle on the shore with the moon above. The lines from the crystals seemed to hold her there. Then we saw it – the actual moon was still in the sky now in the play of cloud. This moon above us was some other kind of emanation. 

The waves of bliss were overwhelming, and the brilliance of the lights dazzled and confused us all. We were forced to sit down, then to lie down, all our heads toward the centre, all our feet radiating out. The moon came down and covered us all, she was not physical so did not crush us, just passed through us all into the earth somehow. We each sat up facing our own direction to the outside of the circle. Then stood and shook and cried and faced each other, embraced like survivors. 

I opened my eyes at my desk, wondering if it had been a collective dream. Went to the door and saw my morning coffee and toast waiting on the tray, on the little golden cart with its sign: compliments of SeaTemple Inn. All the others were opening their doors at the same moment, and all the others drew their carts into their rooms for morning coffee. I took my coffee out onto the balcony and stood at the railing looking out to sea. On either side of me, my neighbours, colleagues, were also standing there. We nodded to one another, noticed a car coming in to the lot, saw that the light had been turned on, Sea Temple Inn. Vacancy.