My Library

eased, and I opened a little. There was a form between me and the radiation, shielding me, and I could perceive a corona effect all around the form from the radiation beyond. It reminded me deeply of religious paintings I had seen, only this was live and in something far different from pigmented color … (This is as close as you can tolerate. We are diverting most of the effective energy patterns, which are in themselves only the random residue, the leakage as you might call it, from the fundamental. Focus through us rather than the outer rim. It will help.) With great difficulty, I narrowed and held on the center of the form … and I began to cool and calm down … slowly my rational and observing self began to emerge again, dominating the overwhelming emotional surge that had enveloped me … it was as if I perceived through a darkly tinted window and I had to work continually to keep the emotion below the threshold level, the wondrous and brilliant joy, awe, reverence, melded into one yet with flashes of each sparking momentarily … all coursing through me as I responded to the radiation, unable to prevent it and barely keeping it under control. This would most emphatically be the ultimate heaven, the final home … (Observe more carefully. You are capable of doing so.) I looked through the smoked-glass shield that was my INSPEC friend … and I was grateful, for I knew if I responded to this degree from just the reflection, the leakage, the full force of the radiation would have shattered me, I was not ready for it, if this was the percept from the distant edge … there, in the long view, was a radiant living form of incredible size, my first percept that of a tall standing humanoid, arms outstretched in front, palms upward … but just as quickly, it was not … instead, a shining globe, edges indistinct, behind it another, identical in appearance, behind it another, a continuous cascade moving away into infinity, beyond my percept ability … from each came numberless beams or rays, some huge in their diameter, others no wider than a pinpoint, all uniform in size throughout their length and beyond my percept as to their destination, some of them moving past me so close that I felt I could