‘Respiro ancora,’ I replied. Still breathing.
He kissed Karla on both cheeks, and then hugged me.
‘It’s wonderful you’re here today, Lin,’ he said happily. ‘I’m so happy to see you. Who are your friends?’
I introduced Silvano, and he greeted everyone, his smile devotion-bright.
‘It’s the Divine that brought you all here today, Lin,’ Silvano said.
‘Oh, yeah? I thought it was Karla’s idea.’
‘No, I mean that there is a great debate today. Great sages, from four districts, have challenged Idriss to a discourse.’
‘A discourse on philosophy?’ Karla asked. ‘It’s the first one in more than a year, isn’t it?’
‘Indeed,’ Silvano answered. ‘And today we will have all the big questions at once, and all the answers. It is a great challenge, by great holy men.’
‘When does it start?’ Karla asked, queens warming up for battle.
‘It should be about an hour from now. We are still getting ready. There is plenty of time to get fresh, after your climb, and eat a snack, before the challenge begins.’
‘Is the bar open yet?’ Didier asked.
Silvano stared back at him, uncomprehending.
‘Yes, sir,’ Ankit said, rattling the backpack that he’d carried up the ragged slope.
‘Thank God,’ Didier sighed. ‘Where is the bathroom?’
I left Karla with Didier and the others, took a pot of water into the forest, found a secluded space that didn’t seem to mind too much, and washed myself.
As soon as Karla detached from me, after that long ride to the mountain, I began to hear the shriek of something breaking, somewhere. Climbing to the camp on the mesa with Karla, I realised that the shrieking I heard, and couldn’t stop hearing, was the acid throwers, breaking on revenge.
From the moment that Blue Hijab told me about the capture, and torture, and death of the acid throwers, I’d been feeling that red tide of burning souls, lapping at my feet.
On the ride to the mountain with Karla holding me, I’d drifted in love, a leaf on a Sunday pond. But when we detached, and as we climbed, memories crawled deeper into the flinch of fear. The bruise of the chain, worse than the bite: screams of surrender, always louder than screams of defiance.
At the summit, while everyone was getting ready for the great debate of wise thinkers, I went to the wise forest to clean myself, and to be alone, with memories of torture and submission.
I was hurting for Blue Hijab and her friend, the horribly burned comrade, and all the cousins and neighbours who were so outraged and angry that they did to the torturers what the torturers had done to them.
But every execution kills justice, because no life deserves to be killed. I survived the desert-inside of prison beatings, and stumbled on, because I forgave the men who tortured me. I learned that trick from tortured men, who felt it their duty to pass it on, when I was chained and beaten in my turn.
Let it go, those different wise men said. Hating them, like they hate us, will ruin your mind, and that’s the one thing they can’t hit.
‘Are you good, baby?’ Karla’s voice called from behind the trees. ‘The debate starts soon, and I’m gonna reserve seats for us.’
‘I’m good,’ I called back, not good, not even not-good-okay. ‘I’m good.’
‘Two minutes,’ she called back. ‘We can’t miss this. It’s made for us, Shantaram.’
I knew why Karla had brought us to the mountain and the fabled sage: she wanted to heal me. She wanted to save me. I was breaking inside, and she could see it. And maybe she was, too. Like Karla and every other soldier I knew, I joked and laughed about things that made other less wounded hearts weep, and I’d learned to harden myself against loss and death. I look back now, and the past is a slaughter: almost everyone I’ve ever loved is dead. And the only way to live with the constant cull of what you love is to take a little of that cold grave into yourself, every time.
When she left, I let my eyes drift into the maze of leaves that only trees understand. Hatred has its gravitational web, locking stray specks of confusion into spirals of violence. I had my own reasons to hate the acid throwers, if I wanted to hate them, and I wasn’t immune to the tremble in the web. But it wasn’t hatred that I tried to clean off myself, in that forest, on the mountain: it was a shame I didn’t create, but didn’t stop.
Sometimes, for some reason, I couldn’t stop it, or I didn’t stop it. Sometimes, for some reason, I was a part of something wrong, before I knew that I wasn’t right any more.
In the forest, alone, I forgave what was done to me. In the kneeling place within my own faults I forgave them for what they did, and hoped that someone, somewhere, would forgive me. And the wind in lavish leaves said, Surrender. One is all, and all is one. Surrender.
Chapter Seventy-Nine
Faith is honesty inside, a renegade priest once said to me. So, fill up whenever you can, son. Faithful students of the mystic teacher Idriss hoping that the exchange with his inquisitors would fill them with wisdom, gathered on the white-stone mesa in late-afternoon sunlight.
Some unfaithful observers gathered as well: a few followers of the great sages, who were hoping to see Idriss, the arrogantly humble thinker, tumble from a cliff of contumacy. Faith is also its own challenge, like sincerity, and purity draws swords in fearful hearts.
Didier, faithful to his own pleasures, found a hammock strung between trees, and wrestled with the alligator of knotted rope for a while, hoping to find a way to stay on it beneath a shady tree for the duration of the discourse.
Karla wouldn’t let him.
‘If you miss this,’ she said, pulling his jacket, ‘I won’t be able to talk to you about it. So you can’t miss it.’
She put our group together with a view of the questioning faces and the interrogated sage.
The spectators had made an arena of cushions, arranged around the pagoda close enough to hear every inflection or inference. Expectation, the ghost of reputation, moved through the crowd as students swapped stories about the legendary sages who’d challenged Idriss.
The holy men emerged from the largest cave, where they’d meditated together in preparation for the thought contest. They were senior gurus with their own followings, the youngest of them thirty-five, and the eldest perhaps seventy, a few years younger than Idriss.
They were dressed in identical white dhoti garments, wrapped luxuriously about their skin, and wore rudraksha beads in chains around their necks. The beads were reputed to have significant spiritual powers to detect positive and negative substances. As legend has it, rudraksha beads held over a pure substance rotate in a clockwise direction, and in an anticlockwise direction over negative substances, which is one of the reasons why no guru is far from a high-quality strand.
They also wore rings and amulets to maximise the power of friendly planets in their astrological charts, and minimise the harm of unfriendly spheres, far away, but never powerless.
The students had whispered that we were forbidden from speaking the names of the famous sages, because they wanted their challenge to Idriss to remain anonymous, out of modesty.
In my mind, as I saw them walk out to take their places on the large cushions, with students throwing rose petals in their path, I called them Grumpy, for the youngest one, Doubtful, for the next, Ambitious for the third, and Let Me See for the eldest in the group, who was the quickest to find his seat, and the first to reach for a lime juice and a piece of fresh papaya.
‘How long will this take?’ Vinson whispered.
‘Okay,’ Karla said, holding frustration at bay with very tight lips. ‘Do you want to spend seven years studying philosophy, and theology, and cosmology, Vinson?’
‘I’m gonna say No,’ he replied, uncertainly.
‘Do you wanna sound to Rannveig like you’ve done seven years of study?’
>
‘I’m gonna say Yes.’
‘Good, then be quiet, and listen. These challenges to Idriss only happen once a year or so, and this is my first. It’s a chance to get all of it in one shot, and I’m gonna hear it, from start to finish.’
‘Will there be an intermission?’ Didier asked.
Idriss knelt at the feet of each sage, eldest to youngest, and took their blessings before he took the small stage, settled himself, and greeted the assembly.
‘Let us smoke,’ he suggested gently. ‘Before we begin.’
Students brought a large hookah pipe into the pagoda, and gave a smoking hose to each of the sages. The longest hose reached to Idriss, who puffed the bowl alight.
‘Now,’ he said, when all had smoked, including Didier, who kept pace with the holy men on a finely tapered joint. ‘Please, challenge me with your questions.’
The sages looked at Let Me See, offering him the first assail. The elderly sage smiled, drew a breath, and waded into the shallows to skip a semantic stone across the water.
‘What is God?’ Let Me See asked.
‘God is the perfect expression of all the positive characteristics,’ Idriss answered.
‘Only the positive characteristics?’
‘Exclusively.’
‘Can God not do evil, then, or commit sin?’ Let Me See asked.
‘Of course not. Are you suggesting that God can commit suicide, or lie to an innocent heart?’
There was a conference among the holy men. I could see their problem. Gods in all ages, according to many sacred texts, kill human beings. Some gods torture human souls eternally, or permit it. Idriss’s version of a God incapable of evil was difficult to reconcile with some of the great books of faith.
The conference broke up, with the baton still in Let Me See’s hands.
‘And what is life, great sage?’ Let Me See asked.
‘Life is an organic expression of the tendency toward complexity.’
‘But are you saying that life was created by the Divine, or that it created itself?’
‘Life on this planet began from the strangely improbable but perfectly natural cooperation of inorganic elements, in alkaline vents under the seas, leading to the first bacterial cells. That process is both self-creating, and Divine, at the same time.’
‘You are speaking science, great sage?’
‘Science is a spiritual language, and one of the most spiritual pursuits.’
‘And what is Love, great sage?’
‘Love is intimate connection.’
‘I was speaking about the purest form of love, great sage,’ Let Me See replied.
‘As was I, great sage,’ Idriss answered. ‘A scientist applying her talents, trying to find a cure for a disease, is making an intimate connection, and is flooded with love. Walking a dog that trusts you through a meadow is an intimate connection. Opening your heart to the Divine, in prayer, is an intimate connection.’
Let Me See nodded, and chuckled.
‘I yield the floor, temporarily, to my younger colleagues,’ he said.
‘How can we know,’ Ambitious began, wiping sweat from his shaved head, ‘that there is an external reality?’
‘Indeed,’ Doubtful added. ‘Even if we allow cogito ergo sum, how can any of us know that the world beyond the mind that we think is real, isn’t just a very vivid dream?’
‘I invite anyone who does not believe in an external reality,’ Idriss said, ‘to accompany me to the edge of the ravine, not far from here, and then I invite you to jump into it. I will take the slow path, down the hill, and when I get to the bottom, I will continue the discussion about an external reality with any survivors.’
‘A good point,’ Let Me See, the eldest sage, said. ‘I, for one, am a survivor, and I am staying right here.’
I’d heard all the questions at one time or another on the mountain, and I knew most of Idriss’s answers by heart. His cosmology was conjectural, but his logic was elegant and consistent. His was an easy mind to remember.
‘Free will,’ Grumpy, the youngest of them, said. ‘Where do you stand, Idriss?’
‘Beyond the four physical forces, and matter, space and time, there are two great spiritual energies in the Universe,’ Idriss said. ‘The first of those energies is the Divine Source of all things, which is continuingly expressed since the birth of the Universe as a spiritual tendency field, something like a magnetic field of darker energy. The second invisible energy is Will, wherever it arises in the Universe.’
‘What is the purpose of this tendency field?’ Grumpy asked.
‘Its purpose is indeterminable, at this point in our awareness. But, as with energy, we know what it does, and how to use it, even though we don’t know what it is.’
‘But what is its value, sage?’ Grumpy asked.
‘Its value is inestimable,’ Idriss smiled. ‘The connection between the spiritual tendency field, and our human Will, is the purpose of life at our level.’
Idriss waved for a new hookah pipe, and Silvano brought it to the pagoda. The Italian acolyte had left his rifle outside the arena, but still moved his elbow as he bent to place the pipe, as if expecting the invisible weapon to fall from its sling.
‘Okay,’ Vinson said, whispering to Karla. ‘Like, I didn’t get any of that.’
‘You’re kidding, Stuart, right?’
‘Like, nada, man,’ Vinson whispered. ‘I hope the whole show’s not as brainiac as that part. How much did you follow?’
Karla looked at him compassionately. One of the things she loved most in the world, maybe the thing she did love most in the world, was a foreign language to him.
‘Why don’t you let me dial it down from ten for you,’ Karla suggested, her hand on his arm, ‘and give you the T-shirt version? Till you get on your feet.’
‘Wow,’ Vinson whispered back. ‘Would you really do that?’
Karla smiled at him, then looked at me.
‘Can you believe how cool this is?’ she asked.
‘Oh, yeah,’ I smiled back.
‘I told you we had to come up here.’
Idriss and the other sages emptied the burning inspiration from the bowl, and turned again to burning questions.
‘How so, master-ji?’ Doubtful asked quickly. ‘How can the connection to this tendency field, or to the Divine, explain the meaning of life?’
‘The question is invalid,’ Idriss said softly, being kind to a colleague who was also pursuing a truth worthy of penance. ‘Meaning is not an attribute of life. Meaning is an attribute of will. Purpose is an attribute of life.’
The sages conferred again, leaning toward Let Me See, who was facing Idriss directly. They shoved angels from the head of a pin, one by one, deciding which portion of the tiny dome would give them best purchase.
Idriss sighed, looking out at the faces of the students, dressed in white, a magnolia circle of fascination. The tallest trees braved the departing sun, shielding the holy men with shade.
‘So –’ Vinson began to ask.
‘Meaning of life, wrong question,’ Karla said. ‘Purpose of life, right question.’
‘Wow,’ Vinson said. ‘So, that’s, like, two questions.’
The sages drew apart. Doubtful cleared his throat.
‘Are you speaking of connecting with the Divine, or with other living creatures?’
‘Every true connection, honest and free, no matter where it occurs, with a flower or a saint, is a connection to the Divine, because every sincere connection automatically connects the connectors to the spiritual tendency field.’
‘But how can one know that one is connected?’ Doubtful asked doubtfully.
Idriss frowned, lowering his eyes, unable to suppress the sadness he saw waving from a lonely shore of Doubtful’s devotion. He looked up again, smiling at Doubtful
kindly.
‘The tendency field affirms it,’ Idriss said.
‘How?’
‘Sincere penance, such as kindness, or compassion, connects us to the tendency field,’ Idriss said. ‘The tendency field always responds, sometimes with a message from a dragonfly, sometimes with the granting of a fervent wish, and sometimes with the kindness of a stranger.’
The sages conferred again.
Vinson used the break in the discourse to throw his arm around my shoulder and pull me into his confusion. He leaned us in to whisper to Karla, but she didn’t let him start.
‘The force is always with you, if you give up force,’ Karla said.
‘Oh.’
The sages coughed their way back into the debate politely.
‘You seek to wrap meaning up in a conundrum of intention,’ Grumpy replied. ‘But are we really free in what we decide, or are we determined by Divine knowledge of all that we do?’
‘Are we victims of God?’ Idriss laughed. ‘Is that what you’re suggesting? Then why give us free will? To torment us? Is that what you really want me to believe? Our will exists to ask questions of God, not just beg for answers.’
‘I want to know what you believe, Master Idriss.’
‘What I believe, great sage, or what I know?’
‘What you fervently believe,’ Grumpy replied.
‘Very well. I believe that the Source that birthed our Universe came with us into this reality as a spiritual tendency field. I believe that Will, our human will, is in a constant state of superposition, interacting with, and not interacting with the spiritual tendency field, like the photons of light from which it’s made.’
The sages conferred again, and Vinson almost asked what was going on.
‘The force is actually you,’ Karla whispered in summary, ‘if you’re humble enough for it.’
‘You are basing very much of what you say on the possibility of choice, master-ji,’ Ambitious said. ‘But many of the choices we make are trivial.’
‘There is no such thing as a trivial choice,’ Idriss said. ‘That is why so many powerful people try to influence all of our choices. If it were a trivial thing, they would not bother.’