It's no coincidence that Sher Point, the metropolis of the Freelands, is an anagram of 'the prison', nor is the name 'the Freelands' itself free from a certain irony. The Sirians, who had originally helped instigate the Eden Project, had a hand in this and they were not without a sense of humour, albeit slightly twisted.
Nor is it coincidental that the words contain within them 'psion', which is associated with faculties such as telepathy. Such faculties did indeed play a part in the original project when people, though some stages removed from Unity or Reality, were nevertheless still able to benefit from it. However with the catastrophic loss of the Link to the Source, though vestiges of such abilities remained as a kind of by-product of spiritual development (incorrectly prized by some), they were largely lost to the masses.
Decay slowly but surely spread through the Eden Project, to the point that the experiment was largely abandoned and the realm ultimately came to be known more fittingly as the Shadowlands.
Sin and the Shadowlands have become, quite incorrectly, synonymous, and several globally organized religious institutions have emerged in the Shadowlands which hold amongst their basic premises the dogma that all people born in the Shadowlands are hapless sinners in need of their particular trademarked brand of grace and salvation. But the truth of the matter is rather more complex. What is seen as black and white by the religionists and the authoritarians might better be likened to a thousand and one shades of grey; or even glorious technicolour.
You see, the degeneration, bad as it was, was further exacerbated by what is now seen in retrospect as a foolhardy policy of biblical proportions: the decision to use the Shadowlands as a kind of pan-galactic therapy centre and later penitentiary, a dumping ground for the dross and lame ducks that other, extraterrestrial communities wished to off-load. It had been somewhat optimistically believed that the penitents would be favourably affected by contact with and immersion in the native community, and this was indeed the case before the Link began to falter. But the sheer number and escalating levels of depravity of the reprobates transported to the Shadowlands ensured that the very converse occurred and they helped to drag the culture down still further.
Alas, movements which once possessed a live dynamic so often succumb themselves and become sometimes grotesquely twisted, fossilised relics and institutions. But fortunately there have always been some who have been able to Remember and to keep the spark or eternal flame alive through the centuries. Tenzing Jangbu Rinchen, a representative of the perennial tradition, is one of those people, and fortunately he is not alone. Truth be told, and rest assured, we are
never alone and help is always at hand.
Though preceded by two prequels, the best place to start reading the Shadowlands series is book 3,
Escape From the Shadowlands.
Painting:
Mountain Peak with Drifting Clouds, oil on canvas painting by Caspar David Friedrich, c. 1835, Kimbell Art Museum.
• By Etienne de L'Amour ~
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