O l i v e r B e n j a m i n
Harvey, my fishy old chum.”
“Of course! You went crazy and became an Indian!”
“Well now, I didn’t go crazy, Harv. I was already crazy. As for the
Indian thing. Yes, I’m now an official member of the Mojave. They’ve
got a window into consciousness that I couldn’t find at the
university.” He got up and put his arm around his former student.
“It’s really good to see you,” he said.
“Yes. I—I’m—I—” Tears came to his eyes.
“Yes, what is it?”
“Say, Fu, do you think you could let me out of this chair? I feel my
spleen may have ruptured.”
“Oh, shoot! Sorry about that. I thought you were just so
captivated that you couldn’t move. Here, let me help you.”
Don Wong, A.K.A. Dr. Fu Ling, spent the next few minutes
attempting to free Harvey from his fetters, which seemed to be good
practice for him. As it was, he hoped to do the same for the entire
human race. However, though one was a metaphor for the other, they
weren’t analogous, because in the case of Harvey’s incarceration, he
would return to a world he was reasonably familiar with. But a
human being liberated from the only world he has ever known and
thrust headlong into a new one, no matter how glorious, faces a
challenge far greater than a mere bruised belly.
There is a saying, taken from the
Upanishads
, the 2500 year-old
composition that probably marks the very genesis of Indo-European
mystical thought. It goes:
The path to enlightenment is narrow as a
razor’s edge.
The implication here is obvious: run too hastily down
that path and it will surely slice you in two.
93
 |
 |
 |
 |