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folding.
Dr Ambara waited until the man had passed and then said, 'An essential part of
our religious activity is the sanghyang, or trance. Anybody who is religiously
devout
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and wishes to experience the spiritual ecstasies of closeness to the gods is
capable of entering such a trance. And a measure of how powerful a trance can
be is that those who enter it are often capable of extraordinary feats such as
walking barefoot on fire, or of dancing complicated dances that nobody has
ever taught them, often in unison with other entranced persons and in perfect
step.'
'I think I've heard something about the sanghyang,' Randolph told him. 'Can't
people in such a state dig knives into themselves, something like that, and
put skewers through their cheeks?'
'Well, perhaps you are getting a little mixed up with the penitents' rituals
at Thaipusam,' said Dr Ambara. 'But essentially you have the idea.'
Randolph started walking again, thoughtfully. 'And it's this trance that
enables people to meet their dead relatives?'
'A highly developed form of it, yes. It is popularly known as the death
trance. It involves fasting and religious training of an intensive nature, and
the chants and the rituals used are very complex and very sakti, which means
magically powerful.'
'If you haven't had any religious training, is it still possible to enter one
of these death trances?' Randolph asked. 'I mean, could / do it? Is there any
chance at all?'
Dr Ambara took off his sunglasses and carefully polished them with his
handkerchief. 'I suppose that for your own safety I should not really tell you
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any of this. But in my estimation, you are a man who is capable of taking a
hand in his own destiny, as long as you understand that I am not recommending
that you follow this course of action. On the contrary, for reasons which I
will explain to you, you would be far better off if you were to forget that I
had ever spoken to you about it.'
He held up his glasses to the foggy sunlight to make sure they were clean and
then went on. 'There are only ten or maybe a dozen adepts capable of entering
the death trance.
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Many try, many fail. The risks of entering the death trance, you see, are
similar to the risks of fire-walking. During a trance it is possible for men
and women to walk, even to dance, across a glowing pit of coconut husks. Their
feet are quite bare, the coconut husks are white-hot, yet they do not even
suffer from blisters. Some people do it regularly all of their lives and are
never hurt. But sometimes a fire-walker's concentration is faulty, sometimes
his faith is weak, sometimes his trance is not sufficiently complete. Who can
say why? When that happens, the fire-walker falters both spiritually and
physically and the fire burns him. I was at a temple blessing in Djakarta when
my cousin lost both of his feet while performing a Sanghyang Jaran, which is a
trance dance on a wooden hobbyhorse. In the time that it took him to dance
from one end of the fiery pit to the other, his feet were burned down to the
stumps of his shinbones, yet all the time he kept on dancing and did not cry
out.'
The sun was at last beginning to penetrate the fog, and the gardens were
transformed to misty gold. Randolph could feel the sweat glueing his shirt to
the middle of his back.
Dr Ambara continued. 'The risks involved in the death trance are similar but
much greater. If the fire-walk goes wrong, you may lose your feet. If the
death trance goes wrong, you will certainly lose your life. Of those ten or
twelve adepts capable of entering the death trance, perhaps fewer than four
have survived its dangers often enough to be capable of guiding a less-trained
person into the realms beyond the veil. Out of those four, perhaps two could
be persuaded to actually do it, although it is impossible to say whether they
could be found and what they would charge for such a service. Needless to say,
it is illegal in Indonesia for a death-trance adept to sell his services for
money, and the government does everything it can to discourage such practices.
I have heard, however, that several wealthy American families have paid
death-trance adepts to contact their deceased relatives, families whose names
you would
143
recognize; and I know for certain that attempts were made to hire an adept to
contact Howard Hughes in order to ascertain where his will might be. Nobody
knows if Hughes was actually contacted or whether the adept failed to find
him. Perhaps he was found and had something to say that did not please the
parties who had been trying to get in touch with him. You must understand, Mr
Clare, that meetings with the dead can be deeply distressing and frequently
terrifying.'
Randolph said tightly, 'You mentioned dangers.'
'Yes, although I have tried not to be too specific. You have little or no
knowledge of our religion, Mr Clare, and so far I have not wished to sound
patronizing. Perhaps you could compare me with a Western mechanic who is
trying to discourage an Indonesian villager from driving a car by frightening
him with the mystifying details of what happens when you strip the gears.'
Randolph smiled. 'You can be as mystifying and as detailed as you like,
Doctor. I've listened to you so far, haven't I, without any outward signs of
scepticism? I think I'm prepared to accept your basic premise that the dead
are not irrevocably dead, that they've simply been removed for a while from
the physical world that the rest of us inhabit. So, whatever else you have to
say, it can hardly be any more difficult to swallow than that.'
'Very well,' Dr Ambara agreed. 'What you have to know is that when you enter
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the world of the dead, you are also entering the world of what I can only
describe to you as demons. Well, you raise your eyebrows. I expected you
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