Prologue

“The Moving Finger writes; and, having writ,
Moves on: nor all thy Piety nor Wit
Shall lure it back to cancel half a Line,
Nor all thy Tears wash out a Word of it.”
— The Rubáiyát of Omar Khayyám

Life, it seemed, was already being written — not in stone,
but in moments. Each choice, each turn, each event leaving
its quiet mark upon the page.

The little boy sat on the bench. Neat hair, yellow
sleeveless shirt, light brown woollen shorts. Brown shoes.
White socks dangling from the timber seat. An innocent
five-year-old.

My gaze shifted back to the mirror. Who was this old
man looking at me? Where had he come from? Where had
the last seventy years gone?

The little boy was still there, waiting. Waiting to come
home.

Time marches on with relentless regularity. Entire years
can vanish in a blink. One day you are a boy sitting
innocently on a wooden bench; the next, a man staring into
a mirror with questions the boy could never have imagined.

Childhood does not recede — it hovers just behind the
curtain, waiting to step back on stage when called. Memory
is not a fading photograph but a living thread. Tug on it, and
the whole past rushes forward, vibrant and near.

Looking back, I see that the boy and the man are not two
figures but one. He has always been here, watching life
unfold — through the bright eyes of a child and the
weathered gaze of age.

This is a soul’s story.
A journey of remembering.

Chapter 1 — The Beginning — 1950s

My first recollections begin around the age of three, when
life was just starting to come into focus. I was raised in a
post-war rebuilding phase in Australia — a raw time of trial
and triumph, of self-reliance and hard work. Money was
scarce and mostly earned before it was spent. If you didn’t
have it, you went without and saved until you did.

There were only three cars in the town, and no
television. The population was young; procreation seemed
to be the entertainment of choice. The local joke was:

“What’s the definition of confusion in this town?”
“Father’s Day.”

Our mill town had been constructed by the Government
after the Second World War, ringed by pine plantations
planted decades earlier. Trees were felled and milled; houses
built for the workers; a power station ran on leftover wood
chips. It formed its own ecosystem.

I was a quiet, gentle soul — shy, bookish. Books became
both solace and entertainment. Even then, I sensed
something different inside me; I could feel things others
didn’t seem to notice.

One day, while walking with the headmaster, a boy ran
up proudly holding a tiny pipe he’d fashioned from a gum-nut.
A hollow bowl. A makeshift stem. His small masterpiece.

The headmaster examined it, then threw it to the ground
and crushed it underfoot. He said nothing. He simply kept
walking.

Who feels another’s pain that deeply at that age?

Chapter 4 — The Timeless Field

In deep stillness, I once experienced the total absence of
time and mind — pure presence, pure love. I had no
language for it then, but later I understood: it was the field
itself — the timeless field — opening.

In everyday life, we are ruled by time. Appointments,
deadlines, birthdays, routines. There is always tomorrow,
and yesterday is already gone. Time keeps the world
functioning; we invented it so life could run efficiently.

The soul does not see it that way. At the soul’s level,
everything exists at once — layered, concurrent, accessible.
Once this is truly grasped, something shifts.

Healing becomes less like labour and more like gathering
wandering selves and offering them safety. These threads are
not enemies to destroy but children to bring home.

When mind and time fall away — something deeper is
revealed.

© Anthony Cooper
The Pathless Journey
pathless@siliconplus.com.au