Autoluminescence

“In the mountains, great energies

are stored, and in the valleys and rivers ‒ also.

With full palms, you may draw energy.”

Peter Deunov

Prolog

In a dream, I saw myself overburdened with orders to translate and edit various manuscripts and other texts. All my acquaintances were making requests, absurd ones in fact, with overlapping nonrealistic deadlines. Then I just went away on a hike in the mountains. I did not run away from obligations; I did not refuse anyone or give warnings; I just went to the mountain supposedly without any notice. It sounded like the best goal, the finest target to aim at: to go somewhere fully and instantly with no confusion attached.

Then, I met my wife there in the high fields, and we stayed together until one of us died. There, my son played in the high grass and sunny air. He later brought his children to play there as well, and those children brought their children later on, and so it went.

Chapter One: The Grassland

I will pledge you an ocean of grass blades. Winds pass waves along the grass surface where rabbits and marten swim. I am mesmerized by its totality. Listening to the rustle with great care. Watchful of the shades of green and yellow and brown and golden. Sensitive to the smell of herbs and ether. Lucid in my dreams as I lie in the fresh, sunbaked grass.

I am a shepherd of lake flies that swarm for a few days. My engagement is short-lived; I may collect their withered exuvia that float on the mountain lake. My professors from the lowland knew how to identify the species of a fly based on its exuvia. I once was very interested in this, but now I am not. It is not bad or impractical knowledge; it is just that it does not have any application here.

No one knew me there. I was well known back in the office, in the academic community, or amongst my friends, but not in the sunny pastures. There, even the people I was with did not know me, nor did I know them. We loved each other deeply; we talked for hours about everything there is to talk about. However, to keep our relationship healthy, we did not know nor strive to know each other. We only aspired to know ourselves. There was no one else so high on the mountain anyway.    

The high altitude, the fresh air, and the dancing sun rays gently melted many of my thoughts. Little worry can survive under such conditions; little hassle can thrive here. My lashing and impatient ambitions shrunk, much like blood vessels shrink when cold. Gentle flies, small blooming plants, simple high grass, shy little animals… only such creatures reside so high up.

My dreams are just as important and fruitful as my waking hours. Work is to be done during the day; different work is done at night. The two are wisely divided, like hawks and owls that share more or less the same prey but do not get in each other’s way. The day’s work looks senseless when we dream, as does the dream seem senseless upon waking. Any meaning of the day is in the day, and the same holds for the night. I find much content in the work that is done and much humility in my divinely limited understanding.  

The day is meant for walking and hiking, foraging and hunting, writing and contemplating, playing and caregiving, making love and conversing. The night is when my meddling mind is suspended. So high up in the mountain, it is suspended and calm but still a meddling mind in its nature. And when suspended, the gates of perception are flung open, and the Universe pours in like a torrent. At night, I, in all modesty, do not know what I do, but I know that it has profound significance. Out of simplicity, I have to give it a name, so I say that I dream, yet the experience escapes description, showing me that all things escape description when pinned down in words.

During the day, I write. Although it seems much more real, I often remember that my writing still cannot capture or pin down anything. Right now, I am enjoying a cup of tasty tea, but my words convey nothing about the tea’s taste; you must have tasted some tea to understand me. The writing has more of a bridging quality than actual experience. It does, however, invoke a different type of experience, much different than that of our senses.

There is a little, stony hill just above the grassland. From afar, the rocks look like bare bones. White, they glitter in the sun; at night, they glow as if with their own light. There, I go to converse with people who have passed along, the fathomless people. My ancestors come there; better still, they are everywhere, but I feel our connection is strongest over there, by the rocks. I try to keep my connection as obscure and intuitive as possible. Their presence is just as natural as the song of birds and crickets in the air. The moment I see it as otherwise, I lose the connection.

I sometimes, hopefully not often, gaze at the faraway city in the lowlands. They are in their own mist, obscured like a shy dame with a veil. Even watching it makes it hard to remember my once-held ambitions. Even if I remember them, I cannot feel them like I did before in the lowland. I move about in the grasslands in sync with their suchness. Their nature is my nature; my behavior results from life’s longing for my practice. What I am there and what I am anywhere is, in essence, the same but with a very different expression. Like a river, a cloud, and an ice block are all water but expressed very differently.

Still, I go on and enter in the wood.    

Chapter Two: The wood

Secrets are whispered in the woods amongst the trees. Like a dome, their crowns and shadows suspend sound in the air, bounce it back, and reverberate it. The moist air cools it down as if each sound shivers, suspended in space. Amplified by the tree trunks, sounds bounce like particles in the half-shade, half-illuminated space as if this wood is an experimental facility, more refined than an atom collider. I am bewitched by it and cannot do anything but listen carefully.

A single tree has lived many human lifetimes and sensed many things. Winds gently sway its massive body, and branches fall and break in winter; flashes find their erect tops; strong winds test their pliability; little beetles eat their bark. Yet the suffering and trials of a tree are much like that of a fakir or yogi. They are not devoid of feeling; their pain is much more real than our own. They feel with immensity, yet just in the instance of pain. Then they go to work without really doing anything, their open wood wounds dry and patch up, their leaves unfold and collect the sun, and woodpeckers eat grubs and beetles under their bark. And if the damage is too much and strenuous, they close themselves within themselves. They become dry and brittle, housing numerous lives in their death, long after their spirit has finally stepped out for a walk, after so many years in stilled meditation.

A pine needle is much to an ant. For there are many needles on the wood’s floor, and many ants are shuffling about. Take the two together, and you will have a nice little pine needle ant hill. Not so little to the ants themselves, but immense and intricate. Hoarding, guarding, gathering, nurturing, growing, and ultimately flying off.

There is a particular specificity to a forest that is not tended by any human. Few such are left, but if you enter them, they look like the ruin of an ancient temple, where each crash and fall is deliberate and meaningful. Dense yet spacious, they play tricks on our perception.

There are always paths in the woods, even in a very wild forest left to its wildness. The boars and deer make paths, and the rain and torrents make paths. The eager traveler leaves a path as he goes on. And if no boars or deer live in the wood, if not a single traveler has traversed it and only you are now in it. If so, then notice where and how your gaze falls. It pierces space like a beam and makes a path on which you may walk.

The saplings have it hard. The wood is made up of their elders who do not give up their positions lightly. Their shade feels nice on the weary traveler’s sweaty brow. But to the saplings, this shade is a scourge that keeps them low and at bay, the trees not even considering how mercilessly they lash their children. Wild animals come to graze the sampling; they cannot graze the trees. Heavy rain pulls off the soil from underneath the sapling’s roots, but the trees’ roots are too deep to be harmed. Yet the saplings come again with each season and are more like an army of youth than single striving individuals. And when a flash or wind tumbles down one of the elder trees, or simply the weight of its age becomes unbearable, a spot is opened. Then, a single sapling gains momentum, and its growth becomes channeled with the sky, and year by year, it is pulled upward by the light. Only to take place amongst its elders and new peers, bear its own children, and delay their realization.

Leaves fall without any effort. One day, they are ready to hook themselves to the wind and dance in it. Leaves and needles, blossoms and seeds, fall when they are ready and leave when they are ready. They initiate their journeys with no strain or effort.

Under a leaf, there is a gall — the little villa of a wasp or gall midge. In larger galls, the size of a teacup, ferries and sprites live. On the largest tree of the wood, on one of its leaves, there is a gall so big that the Leshy can lie in it to rest. After some time, the midges and wasps might leave, and their galls harden and fall to the forest floor. Someone might collect and use them for beads. The ferries and sprites might also leave, so their galls harden and fall to the forest floor. Someone might collect and use them for cups and vessels. But the Leshy’s gall is as old as the oldest tree in the forest. Perhaps one day, it will fall, and someone might fashion a boat out of it.

Lying on the forest floor, staring at the forest dome. There, the treetops weave the shadows in the wood; between them, the sky and sunlight glitter like a treasure heavy on the high branches. Sunrays pierce the forest dome and bridge the ground and sky. Butterflies dance in the maze of light and shadow. I lay on the wood’s floor; it is cool and mesmerizing, and the smell of herbs, shrooms, and moss entrances me. Turning away from the forest and sky, I carefully examine the carpet of moss in the underfoot.          

Chapter Three: The Moss

The forest’s tapestry is soft with moss. Not much else can grow on fallen trees, half-rotten trunks, and branches apart from this most refined cloth of green. Fallen debris locks the soil in many places, and a blanket of moss covers the dissimilation of wood. It confesses how untampered the forest is.

Where a sun ray falls, the moss is dry and baked like warm winter clothing. Where a thick shade is suspended, the moss is moist and fresh with dew. Enumerable creatures live in each dew drop, and though their ephemeral lives might seem quick to us, they feel as if they live throughout millennia. Their society has many sages blessed with longevity. The moss is their Universe, and when the sun hits a patch of moss and stays there for too long, the end of a micro Kaliyuga is triggered. A small Shiva dances there, and a civilization is destroyed in fire only to give way to another with the next morning dew.

On the moss blanket, colorful mushrooms grow. They look like little travelers who have stopped to rest, with wide hats and pouches by their sides. On the wood’s floor, amidst fallen trees and branches, the mushrooms grow quickly and spread across the forest. Collectors come by to find edible mushrooms. Often, they kick and stomp the poisonous ones or even the non-edible ones, or simply the mushrooms they do not know. Their sack is full and heavy as they leave the wood. I might collect some, start a fire, and smoke them as I lay in a meadow enclosed in the forest.

I am a lone observer of the wood that surrounds me. My gaze is focused on the tiny leaves of the moss. Even though my nose is down to earth, I feel that I am stargazing. Since the same artisiane who fashioned the stars also arranged these small, intricate leaves and soft and delicate plant bodies, this is no different from stargazing.

I recall my perpetually untidy apartment. Scattered are the mundane objects of a comfortable life. Out of place, they seem to make no sense, which constitutes a messy atmosphere. They assume a vain order that is fragile, fleeting, and unperpetual, and the lack of it irritates. Now, here on the forest floor and on the moss carpet lie scattered snail shells, dry leaves, acorn caps, twigs, beetle shields, fly wings, a snake’s skin, and more odd objects. None of them seem out of place, even though they are dead, shattered, detached, useless, random… ah no, they are none of this. Their home is everywhere and nowhere; they cannot be misplaced, and they cannot be untidy in their placement; only our minds may trick us into seeing them as such. Our minds are what is untidy. We intuitively know the inventions of comfort as distant from nature (although not divorced from it), so we spin them in a cycle of order and chaos, where they are more prone to the latter, so we might tend to the wheel again and again, often until we die. Nothing can be out of place here in the wood, on the moss carpet.    

The lovemaking of the moss plants is with the water, with the fall of dew and rain, and perhaps a wind that sends the drops hither and thither. It is hard to trace the growth of these obscure plants; it simply happens; mosses happen on the forest floor, on the bark of trees, and on the surface of rocks. All things simply and spontaneously occur here. Time is nowhere apart from in my mind’s eye, and the forest organizes itself at the instant that I see it. Stretching and compressing its phenomenon as I wander in, kneeling on the forest floor to examine the moss, it instantly becomes more complex and refined.

Collecting mushrooms and herbs, camping where the night finds me, still writing and observing, I push on in the dense shrub-work that is this forest. Laying on the mossy floor to sleep and make love, I feel as if I live a life, but rather, I flow in an emerald river of occurrences. And when I suspend my mind (it is easy in this green and living shrine), my awareness opens like a flower or a mushroom cap, spreading to the ends of the Universe and beyond that. Then it withdraws just for fun, just to be lost again.  

A change of clouds happens in the sky. I notice it when the shade and light patches disappear, making way for a uniform darkening. A big gray cloud hangs over the mountain and forest. The gong of thunder vibrates in the electrified air. A light wind moves the branches, then something else moves and taps all the leaves in the forest. Rain rings all about.

Chapter Four: Rain

I hide away when it rains, only to observe the dropfall from the side. Often, my heart cannot bear it, and I leave my shelter and walk in the rain if it is not too heavy. I might find salamanders or snails along the path. Rain and distant thunder are the most beautiful and harmonious sounds ever heard of. The closest our craftsman can reproduce it is with the ring of bells, both small Christmas bells and massive church bells. It sounds like peace, and in peace, there is danger; that is what makes it true peace.

Trees are the most reliable rain collectors. First, their leaves, like ten thousand hands, reach out and, in their palms, collect a leaf load of drops, passing them along, gently downward. The forest floor is like a cascade of vessels, plateaus, pipes, drains, and overflows: trunks, outcroppings, patches of moss, dry leaves, shrubs, shrooms, and flower cups. The drops gently roll on each of these. Then, the receptive soil will drink the rain, having reverence for every drop that finds its way, pulling the water downward into its chambers of secret, darkened life. Fortified with century-old roots and a neural net of mycelium, the soil is ready for the rain, and the rain finds its way through the gates of the soil, and all life everywhere rejoices.

Floods and flash floods are human inventions. Nature does not see them as such. If there is a gush of water, all the creatures caught in it often expect it and thrive because of it. Sad is the small wasteland of a lumber clearing. From a far-off hill, the mountain looks sick with a festering wound where the wood has been shed. There, the rain falls right at the barren ground, the drops heavy in speed, piercing the soil rather than moving into it. The water fills the cavities of pulled-up roots or further rots the half-dead roots left in the ground. The bulk of the soil overflows, its chambers crumble, its finite structure is dissolved. Then, a mass mush of mud and instability tumbles down the hill like a sliding abomination. It cannot help but slide down with an increasingly destructive momentum, often finding a village at the foot of the mountain.

I am but a madman. I change shapes: once, I act as an omnipotent God; other times, I am a pathetic creature of hurt passions. I am unstable as the ground’s surface is under heavy rain. Both beasts and civilized people see my actions as irrational. Only God judges me not. I might think that God encourages me, but I am not sure. Still, I go on, and nothing makes much sense apart from what is happening here in the now. There is some indifference in the air: “Ugh, just another mad, misunderstood poet.” Yet the trees and forest seem to rejoice: “Here comes another mad, misunderstood poet.”

A killer walks these woods! His hooded figure materializes in the rain, made of half iron and half rainwater. Death cannot make sense while the living are still living. It culminates in a peak of fear and pain, maybe a final absolute serenity when everything becomes turned in, and then, well, I do not know. Frightening is the figure of the killer in the rain; it just reflects what we hold in our fearful eyes. It disappears with the rustle of the trees under the rain’s drop fall.     

Life is in all things, even those we name the lifeless, for they still relate to life. Life is in all, and all are members of its union. Among all of life’s children, there is the nimble one, the ever-present one, a messenger, an environment, a worker, a bearer and nurturer – water! In very few places, it is not present. Today, it magnified its presence with the rain. Frogs, snails, and salamanders come out to bathe in it. The forest floor and soil distribute it, squirrels and rabbits hide from it, and deer and hawks tolerate it. I walk in it without needing to. Am I hoping to reconnect with something I have forgotten? We are indivisible with water; why then should I go on and get drenched by the rain?     

When I become too wet and cold, and my body becomes weary of this rain-bound wandering, I might seek shelter once more. I might find a cavity in the cliff that rises above the forest like a white razor. I might start a fire shielded from the rain and dry off, watching how rain, mist, and clouds drift over the forest.

Chapter Five: The Cliff

This naked razor rock stretches along and above the forest. Home of eagles and wildflowers, I am at home here. The cliff’s edge is curled and rigid, with a little side path I can take and follow. Watching how space stretches in front of me and in me. Measuring the forest, the far-away hills, and the mountains with my sight. Stopping, contemplating, getting lost, going back a step or two, but inevitably going on. My breath is fresh, my gaze focused, my path precharted and predestined, and I cannot help but go on.

The flowers in the meadows and grasslands I passed were in a dense and prosperous society. With generous soil beneath a generous sun above, their stems, shoots, and blades grow in the millions. But here on the cliff, just handfuls of soil are placed within the cavities of the rock. Some parts of it find the sun during most of the day, while other narrows are in an almost perpetual shade. Yet a pea-sized chunk of soil is enough for a dozen grass blades to grow. A single flower may reside on a piece of rock in a chamber just as big as its little root. Yet that same root digs away at the flesh of the cliff. This generation and maybe seven more, a single flower will bloom there, then two huddled together, later three and four. The lifeless body of the cliff is an excellent frontier for life.

What is so captivating in this austere landscape? Its height, its ambiguity, its narrow space, its difficulty? What prompted us to seek to climb, even as children, a certain bolder or a tree caught our attention, and we had to climb on top of it. Not so much as vain explorers but as humble and playful pilgrims. I hope to be the playful pilgrim who takes on the frontier because it has a certain rapture. I hope that my engagement with the world will retain its intriguing secrecy. And when my sore legs get me on top of the cliff and the landscape presents itself to me and I to it, we mutually might feel in our heart of hearts that we are praying together in the fresh, sunny air as the wind passes our crossroad.

A weird society lives in me. Painfully self-conscious, cynical of its cynicism, prosperous yet constantly depressed, an excellent weever of problems because it seeks to embroider on them the solutions it invented. And there is much talk, much presentation now, much engagement. One might think that very few hermits are left, yet there is a new hermitage in talking to everyone about everything and spreading your reach further along — loneliness amongst crowds.

There was once a mad God, a God of profit and growth. He grew a herb in a pot at his mansion. Then, he made more seedlings of the same kind. Then, he made a small garden, made the herb bigger into a shrub, then into a tree, and made a grove. Then, that grove spread into a forest. The God cleared other plants, chased away creatures and vermin, and sent magic rain on his tree-herb to repel insects and make the plant grow faster. His empire spread across the hills and mountains like gathering clouds growing their shadow. If he came by a lake or swamp, he drank it all up and planted more of his plants in the freed-up space. He pushed aside villages and cities, sending his tree-herb to grow and spread, chasing all other creatures out. Each generation was stronger, larger, a faster grower, thornier, more bitter, and more resilient. Until it resembled more of an army than a growing forest. Then, reaching cliffs and ravines, it grew on top of the rocks without needing soil. And the mad God was pleased with his immense crop that had consumed all the space in the landscape. Then, one day, in a capricious fancy, which seemed unexpected but somehow wasn’t, the God, with one swipe, cleared away all of his tree-herbs, leaving not a trace behind, not a single seed or branch. An immensity of space was freed up, and the mad God rested in meditation for millennia to cool down his omnipotent temper. And while he rested came back the diverse forests, rain filled the lakes and bogs, settlers made new villages and cities, the winds cleared the cliffs and ravines. It took time, but as far as nature was concerned, this was no more than an instant.

The cliff is a gift from the Earth. It was pushed up in a struggle the Earth had with itself. Each movement of rock and displacement of mountain ranges took enormous time and effort, yet the Earth is willing and yielding. Once the groundwork of the cliff was done, it allowed the wind and rain to sculpt its creation further. And then life was welcomed to take on any space it could take. And here I am, the last one invited to the cliff’s edge. An awkward traveler, constantly changing aim and direction, seeking something I intuitively know does not exist or I could not see even if it hit me on the head. In all my action and fancy, there is the image of the seeker, the wanderer, the explorer, the writer, yet in all the earnestness I can fathom, these listed are only the clothes of my soul. Essentially, I got them from somewhere else, and the tailor fit them to measure me. My actuality is underneath, and I pretend I lost it and have to seek it out. Children love it when you seek them, stating that you do not see them (but really you do). They smile like stars as you lock gazes and say, “Where are you? Where have you hidden?” The Child God that is my soul, my essence, my placeholder of the Universal ether is having the time of their lives, smiling, laughing, knowing that it is so obvious where it is, knowing that I know, yet playing pretend. Children’s laughter fills the air and resonates with the wind as people search for their divine nature.

I fell asleep on the chilly cliff, snuggled up in my sleeping bag, back pressed to the rigid skin of the rock. Above me were all the stars and planets of the Universe. I was in a half-dreaming state, where my being merged with the starry sky and the fabric of my dreams, recognizing them as one. I was no longer the traveler on the cliff’s edge; now, I traversed a space so vast that I was not actually moving anywhere. It was like holding an object with many surfaces. I examined each one; each turning of the object was a turning of the Universe. I turned the cliff sideways and upside down, rotated the night sky, jumped from within to the outside of me, and then back. Then, everything stilled. I woke to see a morning dressed in night; the moon was setting, orange and full as if it were early evening. It was five o’clock. I heard bells ringing in the distance.    

Chapter Six: The Monastery

Why isolate yourself from society in order to know God? Why do hermits and monks enter the wilderness and, in solitude, speak to God or wait for God to speak to them? Is the crowd on the market square sufficient to mute God out with its chatter? Empirically, this seems to be the case, and life has a way of hiding itself from the source of life. Here I am, well away from many things I once knew. I once knew offices and buildings, homes, parks, traffic, stores, and many, many people. Now, I am beside grasslands, hills, forests, trees, shrubs, mosses, cliff edges, and the open landscape and feel in my heart of hearts that I have more experience here. It is in the nature of humans to hide themselves more deeply from God than the trees, beasts, or mushrooms. Having hidden themselves more deeply from God, it makes sense for them to travel more towards God. Here is a monastery built in a carved-out hollow of the cliff, just after a mountain spring that gushes from a bronze spout in the rock, with a stone trough underneath. The Monastery’s patron is St. Menas.

On the cliff, I heard church bells. Yet when I reached the monastery, no one was to be found. The monks were probably out collecting herbs early in the morning or fishing in the lake. So, I stepped nearer to their little chapel. Behind it, I saw circular cavities in the rock. These, I assumed, were the cells of the monks. Then, further along, was a narrow cave with some stones arranged in a circle, probably to be used as chairs, and a large, flat boulder, which took on the role of a table. A furnace was carved in the rock, and provisions were stored around it in jugs, pots, and baskets. I saw the simple life of the monks in the traces they left.

Since there was no one around, I entered the little chapel. Entering, I made the cross sign on my forehead, chest, and shoulders. The chapel’s walls were plastered with bright white lime. The wall was not smooth but irregular, like the line of the landscape with peaks and valleys, apexes, and depressions. Several icons were hung on these walls and stood crooked but beautifully. As if by this, the saints looked more natural, more down-to-earth. Then, I took a candle and lit it without praying. I thought of leaving some money for the candle as is the custom. However, there was no dedicated place of offerings, no bronze chest, or even a plate, and not a single coin was left in the chapel. Then I thought, so high up, so remote, what need do have these monks of money? Where would they spend it? Maybe a trip to the nearest village, a day’s hike! Giving them money, I would force them to either dismiss it or go down to the places they left. Thus, I exited the chapel to look for some labor I could offer to the monastery.

I found a pile of firewood, a stump, and an axe. Perfect! Ever since I was a youth, I have loved chopping wood. My grandparents used a wooden stove; my parents also had one in our summer cabin. So, I went to it, chopping the big chunks of dried lumber into smaller ones, small enough to fit their placement in the monk’s furnace, not too small though; they had to burn long and give all their warmth. It was meditative, swinging the axe, moving the cut wood aside, taking on new pieces. I aimed without aiming, worked without forcing, and gave something to the monastery that I would have gladly done even if I had not burned one of their candles. Then I slipped into a grateful weariness and went to the spring to drink some water and freshen up.

The spring by the monastery seemed older than the monastery. Maybe it first initiated this pilgrimage on the cliffside as if the water gushed out from a wound in the cliff, a bronze spout embedded in the rock. A faded mural of St. Menas on a horse was drawn just above the spring. The water is cold and fresh, moss and mold grow on the walls of the trough, and water snails and the larvae of flies live in the pool gathered under the spring. It is as if another monastery from another parish is gathered in the twenty-centimeter pool that thrives because of an enormous waterfall suspended in the heavens. The larvae of lake flies traverse the water moss like farmers working in a field. A frog may pass by like a mystic, carnivorous giant, horrifying the meek little monks living in the water. But at the end of it, their small, enclosed, wet Universe is more nurturing than threatening, more plentiful than barren, more stable than distorted. It is heavenly in its own right. One might assume that the little monks in the water moss do not practice and pray to get into heaven since they are already in it.

I strayed into my thoughts for a long time as I lay by the cold spring, watching the hills and forest underneath. My sweaty brow dried up in the sun, my warm muscles and flesh cooled down in the mountain air, and I even felt a shiver. Then, returning to the lumber and the axe for what seemed to be an hour, I smelled burning wood, and indeed, the furnace had been lit, the fire twinkling and slowly dying. The smell of burning wood and smoke was trumped, however, by another smell: it smelled of freshly baked bread. There it was, body and flesh, a loaf of pumpernickel bread was placed on my wood-chopping trunk, covered in a cloth. No one was around. Had a hidden, shy monk baked it while I was resting, or had an angel created it out of thin air and just lit the furnace to cover its tracks? I was hungry and did not wonder about it all that much; I ate it and enjoyed it.

Prayer is a way to talk with God, yet all we are and all we do reach God; better still, all we are and all we do is part of God. The only lack is in our own conviction. It is so hard to convince ourselves that nobody chased us out of Eden in the first place. So, the conventional prayer is capricious, specific, ritualized, and pedantic, as if we were not speaking to God but a vain landlord, very particular about etiquette. Yet God does not mind that we play hide and seek; in fact, he first initiated the game.

I spent the day in the Monastery. I worked there, ate, rested, and worked again, but saw no one. I could not sleep there; however, I walked an hour’s worth by the cliffside and camped out. Under the stars, I felt more at home, as if I had been invited to a celestial meeting. The chilly night soothed me to sleep; the morning dew awoke me. Then, I went further along an obscure path in the high grass and mountain shrubs; there, I saw the cave entrance.    

Chapter Seven: The Cave

The world is being built up before us as we go on. Trees grow and spread when seen; stars are born in the night sky as we observe them; caves emerge on sight. Thus, a cave opened up in the cliffside as I saw it. A wise man was asked a rather acerbic question: “What will happen if all humans become enlightened?” he answered, “Then this world would cease from existing, but do not worry, as long as you want it, you will have it.” And I feel I craved the mountain, the grassland, the hills, the forest with its moss carpet floor. I further craved rain, the cliff, the monastery, and now the cave. I seem to find something in them, to experience something with them, like a puppeteer so used to his puppet that he cannot speak without it in hand.

Whatever truth met me on my path, whatever wisdom favors me, this does not purge me of my human weakness. I have no deliverance from vanity, anger, selfishness, pity, harshness, and greed. The more I learn and practice, the more I am acutely aware of their presence, which vexes me so much. It is as if the point of life is to dispense with what you and others do not like about yourself. Knowing that people can’t do anything, they turn to the Gods to save them — Gods of compassion and mercy like Christ or Amida Buddha. We crawl into our self-awareness like blind salamanders in a cave and ask the celestial beings to pull us out. The latter might ask, “Why do you pretend you are belly-crawling critters in a moist, pitch-black cave?”

The creatures of the cave are blind; what need do they have for sight when they reside in darkness? We, the earth-dwelling, light-worshiping beings, may show pity and disgust for bats, cave salamanders, and cave crickets. Monkeys may be disgusted by us because we lost our tails as we plaud the earth and build our cities. Gods might scorn us for being attached to things or for building idols… Ah, but probably do not. We are the only phenomenon in the Universe that scorns and shows pity. Then, after indulging in it for some time, we decided not to do that anymore. We change anew and might even move to a monastery in the mountains. Our scorn and pity are banished to the cave of our soul, where they most naturally lose their sight as they are lost from sight, become pale and white, and although they are far and isolated, their influence just the same, but through different means.

I have no gear; my small flashlight won’t get me very far, and my clothes will get muddy and moist if I enter the cave. Yet I know I will, regardless of my timidity. I stay and procrastinate in front of the high and somewhat narrow entrance. Thinking of home, of my goals and plans, and of all the engagements I divorced myself from. Are hermits and pilgrims vain cowards? Those who cannot bear a practice along with other people, those who are with a different pace and affiliation, are still people, brothers, and sisters of one kin. Sometimes, they decided to cheat, to take a lofty and divine shortcut and cut themselves from the crowd that dragged them down. This is a good and effective practice because if they progress in their pilgrimage or their hermitage, they will realize that the crowd did not impede them in any way. Not a single thing dragged them down, ever! They were the master weavers of their lives; each thread passed through their fingers and entered the cloth by their own choice. This is such a heavy and iconoclastic truth that it is common for some to say God is the master weaver who, with divine decisions, chose every single thread of my life, and I was totally engrossed in this will and wisdom. Once, I heard a wise man say that whether you see yourself as the weaver of the world or a deity as the weaver and you as just another thread in its cloth, you are talking about the same thing.

I slightly entered the cave, a few meters away from the last touchpoint of light. From the shadows of the stony hollow, the light looks even brighter and more dazzling. It is a nice summer day; birds sing, flies and bees buzz, and the wind rustles through the trees like a traveling minstrel. And I am leaving all of this behind to enter in a darkness. Why? I am no explorer. Is it not dangerous to go about entering strange caves without any preparation or proper gear? Yes, it is, and yes, I enter still. I am being pulled in by myself, tugging myself from within the edge of darkness.

The farther I am from the light, the more brilliant it becomes. I do not crave it desperately. I do not doubt my actions much. I made no deal with Hades not to look back; I can look back all I want. I want to check on the light and see if it is still there.

I stood still and turned off my flashlight. The blackness in front entrances me. If you look carefully where it is pitch dark, you may see that the darkness moves and is made of particles. Small shadows of shadows that tremor in a Brownian motion. They move randomly, appear and disappear, and morph into each other, and, most importantly, they are always ahead of my mind so that I may not cast them into any pattern. The stars stay fixed in our sight as we observe them at night as a courtesy on their part. To preserve our sanity, they do not move and race. In reality, they do; they spin, expand, and explode, but from all this, they send to us, the stargazers, just a twinkle. So, we love the night sky and fear the darkness from our earliest age because it is the closest natural phenomenon that portrays the void from which all things are born. Such a void is more intimidating than any bright, blazing God. The Greeks had Hades, who was the God of the Underworld but not a God of evil. His kingdom hung in the air; it was darkness, no fire or brimstone, just the trembling shadows of shadows. Hades was commonly drawn with his face turned away since all humans and other Gods turned away from him. Betters still, the Buddhists and Hindus were wise in keeping a special place in their heart and practicing for the void. And here I am, watching the moving darkness. Here I am, slowly and carefully stepping further down in the cave.

At the moment when I am sure that no light follows me, I stop. I sat on a cold rock and watched and listened. Silent and dark. I knew I could find my way back; I knew I had ventured far enough.

Chapter Eight: Autoluminescence

I know all things; I am all things. Those who think it is vain do not understand that they are in the same position as me – all-knowing, all-encompassing. I forget this often, and more often still, I act like this is not the case; nevertheless, in my heart of hearts, I know this, and I rejoice because of this. Once, my mother told me, “We are all holograms,” which angered me. How dare she use words like that! Am I to believe we are hollow images, projections without substance, like the images in sci-fi films? But I was ignorant in scorning at my mother. The word hologram comes from Greek, meaning “The whole message”; we are the whole message, all of it, and nothing slips from us. The principle of “holistic representation” states that each particle of a hologram adequately describes the whole. This is not the same as saying that a thing is made of pieces; instead, a thing is made of the thing. So, it is as clear as the day that I am both the cave and my mother, and the world left behind, and my children, and my teachers and Agni, the Hindu God of fire that knows all things, and the skies above and all other things I forgot or can’t mention. All of it is here in the cave, and the cave is in all of it.

As I sit in the cave, I wonder, along with my senses, in the darkness. I pass my finger on the slick surface of the rock and feel something slippery and gelatinous. I roll a ball with it between my fingers. Since I am all things and know all things, I know that there are algae in this little ball.

I spent many years at the University. I saw many teachers, professors, students, and bureaucrats, and even some encyclopedists, but very few scholars, very few truly wise individuals. Of the wise people I met there was a botanist, Prof. Draganov, a particularly short man with almost Gnomish features. He knew many things, studied many different things, suffered, and pulled through many struggles. Once, I read a short paper by him. The paper was so old that nobody else had studied that subject before. Hence, it had only one citation—a single reference to the laboratory method he used. Prof. Draganov had collected slush from a cave, where it was pitch black, and extracted chlorophyll from it. Why was there chlorophyll in total darkness since there had to be light for photosynthesis? The professor postulated that without any portions of light, the chlorophyll had to activate itself through something he called autoluminescence.

At first, there was darkness, and God said, “Let there be light,” and created everything from out of nothing. The Brahman, lonely in his oneness, wanted to see himself, so he became all things. Or maybe a colossal Bang that came out of nothing launched all things and flung them into space. Are not all these stories talking about the same process? Nothingness gives birth to all things. Thoughts and inspirations floating in the air, coming from we know not where, build bridges, write novels, populate cities, and conquer frontiers. And these little algae can make their light; they can start the photosynthetic reaction by themselves and activate an electron spontaneously.

All things self-start themselves; all are started from the Self. I dreamt of leaving, then of mountains, grasslands, forests, a cliff, a monastery, and a cave; all of this to find that things are happening by themselves, from themselves. Energy seeming is passed along entities; in actuality, it just happens. Plants living in pitch black happen to exist as if they had light. And we might be the same. All of us might be the same.