'Thirty seven,' said Toby, with bravura.
Wizard Prang's eyes twinkled back at him.
'Tell me how you got to that.'
'Meditating, not thinking like you told me often. Your name doesn't really
have five letters, you said. How many letters does it have, you said;
think about it.' 'Think about it?'
'Yes, well, I knew what you meant,' Toby said. 'I sort of thought. I
meditated; and the number thirty seven came. So then I wondered why, and
something else in me said, 'It's an acronyrn.' And then I thought I saw
it. The acronym, that is.'
The wizard undertook one of
his beaming faces, and refilled the Toby jug.
'My name
has seventy three letters,' he said gently. 'Then I
made a bloody mess of that.’ Toby felt embarrassed.
'Language,' admonished Wizard Prang mildly. 'Besides: I'm old and you are
young. Can't you see what happened? What did you say, and what did I say
about the numbers of letters, that is?' 'I said 37 and
you said 73.' 'A very exact correspondence, wouldn't
you say?'
Toby sipped thoughtfully from his jug. He was even cottoning on
to the wizard's mannerisms, as Perny often warned him.
'I got it the wrong way round,' he said after a pause.
'Maybe I got it the wrong way round.'
'How could you? It's your own name.' 'I don't own my
name,' said Wizard Prang. 'My name is a sign for me. I'm old and you are
young. We are just coming from different directions, wouldn't you think?'
Toby did some more rather mannered sipping. He looked
quite like the way he had looked the night he had worn his father's dinner
jacket without his father's prior knowledge.
'Don't
worry so much,' the wizard twinkled on. 'You won't have mistaken the
acronym.' 'Must've done. The acronym has only thirty
seven letters.' 'So let's hear it.'
'Oh, well,' said Toby: 'P R A N G Perpetually Redefining A
Neverending Game. Thirty seven letters,' he added miserably.
'What did I tell you?' said Wizard Prang and wandered
outside for a minute or two while he wiped his eyes.
By the time he came back Perny had appeared from nowhere and was chatting
with Toby.
'Ah, good,' she said. 'Is there anything
you need before we go?'
Wizard Prang deployed his
famous flair for repartee.
'Er?' he said.
Perny rose
decisively, did some energetic pouring, and came over with his chalice.
'With your permission to me and with Toby's parents'
permission to him, I am taking Toby to the Cotswolds for a couple of
days.' 'Of course,' the wizard said: 'I know that.'
'Great then,' Perny endorsed, 'You will have at least five
hours to check your Trismegistos calculations before Radha comes.'
That was good. Perny had bullied the wizard into doing the
calculations that underwrote his spells on a modern electronic box of
tricks. He pretended to agree that this was quite an advance. Secretly,
and usually on Perny's Thursdays off, he checked the results by good old
fashioned mental arithmetic. But he did not invariably do this on
Thursdays, and the outcome was that Perny shared the secret. The Wizard
failed to notice the implication.
'Imogen Suppose is
bringing Radha by car, and will collect her again in exactly forty eight
hours. I'm sorry that I shall just miss her at each end of the visit, but
no doubt you intended that,' the Sourpuss said. 'Radha
is a samayamudra,' Wizard Prang said quietly. 'The time is not the right
time. Who is Imogen Suppose?' 'In a quantum field
everything happens at once, so any time is right or wrong. But I suppose
you know what you are doing. Imogen herself is a physicist, but she won't
stop. She's just a friend, and she's doing the chauffeuring between here
and Carmarthen. She says that her even momentary presence would interfere
with the interaction between you and Radha. Heisenberg lives again
perhaps.' 'A good physicist, I suppose,' the wizard
remarked. 'Value judgment!' Toby thought he had caught
the wizard out on a favourite hobby horse, too. 'No,
no, you misunderstand. I'm talking about competence, not ethics. A good
physicist is a philosopher with both imagination and courage.'
'Where does that leave philosophers?' Toby asked.
'Precisely nowhere,' said Wizard Prang. 'It was not always
like that.' 'We are going to miss the bus,' fussed
Perny, pulling Toby out of his chair, pouring a last glass of wine and
water, and donning her poncho from Peru (that she had once brought over
with considerable psychic effort) apparently simultaneously.
'Where in the Cotswolds?' the wizard asked plaintively.
'It's the familiar fare, I suppose: tourist fodder.'
'No, it's the Familiar's Fair. I told you.'
Perny steered Toby and was
anxious to get out of the door.
'Moreton-in-Marsh,
Stowe-on-the-Wold...?'
They got out. Perny put her head
back into the room.
'Toad-in-the-Hole' and went.
The wizard chuckled, ruminated a bit, and sent a blessing
flying after them. He played safe on the distance factor, with the result
that Toby slipped and fell over with the force of it.
'Flipping mud,'
grumbled Toby.
Perny knew better, but she helped him up.
After he had verified the Trismegislos calculations, and made a decently
quiet obeisance to that Hermes, Wizard Prang still had time to go over his
place. He did not bother with half eaten sandwiches and bits of chocolate cake
(how Blodwyn would have scolded him for that and she more or less a
Karmamudra at any rate herself). But he moved some flowers (which Silica
called 'flower arranging', not being all there to being a Knowledge Woman,
that is). He lit the various candles and not others (Pam always lit the
lot, he sadly reflected due to her cheerful mien, he gladly elected, the
Welsh Cynghaneddion being in the air). Then he adjusted the auras of a few
things, conscious of Perny's handling of them on her day to day basis.
Esperanza had badly cracked an Inca saucer in passing, he discovered, and
he buried the shards outside under the rose bay willow herbs. That would
cheer them up. Wizard Prang had not set his eyes on Radha since she was one of the
shishyas. He had of course seen her since then. He saw her now, on the way
from Carmarthen in Imogen's car, and added a little musk to the blend of
patchouli and jasmine and frangipani that floated in the firelight and
clung to the ancient stone walls. Radha came wearing a sari of subtle pattern, not sumptuous, but rich in
tinsel gold and silver threads. She wore a filigree nose jewel and ear
rings that chimed with the cosmos. If she had started out with any kind of
luggage, she had left it in Imogen's car, the wizard supposed. They greeted formally. They greeted Informally.
'I want to talk to you,' Radha said, round about noon the next day.
Wizard Prang seemed surprised.
'Ah, in that case,' he said, getting up and organizing his wine and water,
'let's lubricate the articulation of speech. What would you like?'
Radha came over to him. She wore her old shishya robe, which had been on
its old peg in the comer, and her hair was loose too. She whispered in his
ear, and giggled. The wizard smiled. Their voices sounded unaccustomed to the space. The two slid as smoothly as possible from the knowledge of emptiness and
its unity with compassion that had betokened their reunion and their union
anew. Radha marked the pledge of that clear light, sealing it: for that is
the job of a samayamudra and it is the very meaning of her name: Pledge
Seal.
'It is difficult to do the work in India today,' she
said, 'because the culture of the intelligentsia has been so thoroughly
Westernized. It despises its own heritage.'
The two had unthinkingly resumed a physical posture that they had always
adopted years before. Some of what she was saying was transmitted through
her fingertips; his own acknowledged it, closing the loop.
'There seems to be a root problem about the very nature of being,' she
went on. 'Our being is an emanation of a continuous flux. It is anicca.
But Heraclitus knew that too.' 'Yes,' Wizard Prang went on, 'but not Empedocles. Zeno actually took the
flux apart, so that even Aristotle could not put it back together again.
He gave up on the problem, instead of inventing the differential calculus
on the spot. Two thousand years wasted. So in the West, being has ended up
as an essentially static entity. In the hands of a Jung it attains to
flexibility, because he understood so much of the Vedanta, but mere
flexibility isn't enough. Yes, the problem is radical, all right.' 'So if the context is static, then ... well, being soon attains to the
status of ... a thing.' 'It is the psyche under the microscope,' the wizard said. 'So no anicca.
And it's only a step to say no anatta either.' 'Anatta, which is often translated as
"no self", is best thought of as
inseparable entity...'
Radha, who knew this already, picked up from his fingertips, continuing:
'... inseparable from the continuous flux.'
There was wordlessness in their conversation for a time, but at some point
Wizard Prang suggested:
'Watch out for articles a syntactical trap for the
ontologically unwary. It's hard to say "inseparable from continuous flux"
in English: we want to say "the".' 'Then the continuous flux itself becomes a separated entity, an object of
study, before we drop down the logical step to the being as an object that
it enfolds.'
Wizard Prang was thoughtfully replenishing glasses when Radha tossed
across:
'I suppose it wouldn't help to say "a" instead of "the"?'
The wizard turned towards her, holding the chalice and a bottle of wine.
'Watch,' he commanded.
He poured some wine, he set the bottle down. He picked up
the flask of water. He waved the chalice:
'Here is the wine.'
He poured water into the chalice and waved it again:
'Here is a wine. Of sorts.'
The samayamudra did her delighted laugh. It covered about three octaves,
and was pure aphrodisiac.
'The Indefinite article waters down the definite article,' she said, 'but
the ontology remains to threaten our understanding. I see.'
Pure aphrodisiac. A pure aphrodisiac. The pure aphrodisiac.
'What are you thinking?' Radha had tuned in to something. 'Nothing germane,' said he. They resumed their accustomed position, drinks
to hand ... each other to hand. 'I'll try to translate anicca anatta,' Radha said, 'to be ontologically
secure in English syntax! She took a deep breath. 'Being: inseparability
from continuous flux.' 'Not bad,' the wizard said. 'It doesn't mean all you'd like, because
English has not been formulated, over its linguistic evolution, to express
the oriental tao. But certainly it contrasts well with the occidental view
that being means: a discrete entity within the setting of a static
totality.'
The two of them took what could best be expressed as a short break ... the
short break ... pause button: that is, pause in process.
'Back to work,' said Radha firmly at some moment. We have a complete
fracture, when you get down to it. We have old-time Indians talk about a
process of apprehension, which has two different facets a give receive
interaction, just like us,' she said, squeezing him hard. It's that
interpretative interaction that generates apprehension at all. On the
contrary ...'
Radha sat back on her haunches, and held his hands out in the air.
'... we new time Indians have adopted the occidental mode. There are you,
and here am I, and we exist In clock time and map space in which we move
about according to linear rules. Huh.'
She threw down his hands, got up, and went to the window. Everything in
that framed and pictured world was quite unchanged. She turned toward him.
'There's no connexion anywhere but in the commonality of sex.
Philosophically, not to say economically, India has sold out to the West.'
Wizard Prang brought her back to their private asana, their posture.
'Shh, little Shishya' it had no condescension as he said it, only an
evocation of earlier days. 'Please see the connexion. It is there. You go from anicca to anatta: and
then where?' 'Dukkha,' said Radha flatly. 'Suffering,' he confirmed. 'And don't you think that the Western account
of being ends in suffering too?' 'Aren't the causes necessarily different?' 'It's people who aren't different, that's for sure' the wizard was
emphatic. 'We go to great lengths with our philosophies to explain being.
But being for almost everyone is in practice the consciousness of
suffering. When the cards fall right, it's the converse, namely joy.'
Radha thought it over for some time, her hands turning to him.
'Suffering consists in trying to resist overwhelming flux and inseparation
from that,' she said, struggling over the matter of articles. She could
not avoid the final "that" but hoped that grammatically it merely
represented and referred to 'flux'.
Process pause. She continued:
'Suffering derives from the illusion of permanent selfhood.' 'Classic Orient,' said Wizard Prang. 'I'll try to match that in occidental
terms, despite the dualistic language that has caused us all the trouble.
Here goes: suffering derives from the alienation of the discrete from the
general good.' Eventually she said: 'Alienation is a special word after all. It's early
Marx ... the alienation of a worker from his own product. Is that the
alienation of the discrete from the general good? Perhaps it is.' 'I would think so,'the wizard said softly. 'Now what about your side, your
terminology. Isn't the 'illusion of permanent selfhood' simply a mode of
self pity?'
The samayamudra thought before she laughed. Her impeccable English slipped
a trifle.
'Self pity is it! Imagining how a Westernized Indian, British Public
School and Oxford, reacts to the idea that his ego is a drop of water that
will find its way to the ocean? Very laughable that is.'
Wizard Prang looked grave.
'Can you imagine how an Easternized Caucasian, soaked in the Vedanta and
Zen, reacts to the idea that his ego or possibly id will roast forever in
hell?'
They looked at each other and embraced, laughing immoderately. Only
scholars and saints seem to find out that laughing joins looking and
embracing as tantras before the highest yoga tantra, which is union. The two friends and spiritual conspirators, which means that they breathe
together, made a small but complicated ritualistic meal. They fed each
other, and drank a rich red wine from the same and special cup. And it was bedtime.
Wizard Prang was sitting on the grass outside his door when Radha came
back up unnoticed from the stream where she had spent some time making
herself kempt. She was almost demure when she came out of the house, sat
down beside him, and offered him the chalice.
'Talk some more?' she asked.
The wizard took the chalice and put his arm around her. She had no cup
herself. He looked deep into the wine and water and saw it had been
blessed already. He took the chalice in both hands now, and took a little.
He put the chalice to her mouth. She took a little, but did not touch the
cup. She sat against his left thigh. Thus they continued seven thousand
years of history.
'When I talk about rebirth,' Radha started, 'I often recall that you do
not. It makes sense, doesn't it? Our actions constitute karma itself,
which is to say action. And our karma must resolve itself until resolved
it is.' 'Yesterday,' said Wizard Prang, 'you made a very clever statement about
the anicca anatta dukkha cycle. Permanent selfhood is an illusion, you
said. That's maya. So what is it that gets reborn? The western soul of
Eastern man?' He giggled and squeezed her waist. 'You
are pointing to your old teaching, aren't you, that all our perceptions
are couched in terms of some model or other. So now it's time.' 'You bet it's time. Again, you said yesterday that in a quantum field
everything happens at once. Do you want all the rebirths simultaneously?' 'I didn't say any such thing. Imogen Suppose said it to me, I suppose.'
Wrong supposition. Wrong shishya. But that was in another country, and
besides the wench is dead. Radha shivered because of what he was thinking, so he stopped, and
squeezed, and fed her the chalice.
'You are wonderfully aware of the Buddha Bodies; and you know the deva
yoga that performs the interpenetration of the Truth Body, which is the
imprint of wisdom, and the Form Body, which is the imprint of merit.
Yesterday you spoke clearly about the unity of apprehension.'
He looked at her closely. Yes, she had so spoken. Got it right for once.
'Wisdom and merit. An interpenetration, don't you see? Who needs time to
do it especially if time is maya, illusion?' 'But you have to earn merit. That's got to take time. Maya or not. Maybe
we have no alternative but to work within the temporal model.'
'If there's no alternative, that makes the model a paradigm. It's not
negotiable.' 'Well, I've heard all this before from you, so I must be in a time loop,'
Radha said with some exasperation. 'Pull on the
strings, and maybe the loop will vanish into a singularity.'
The samayamudra turned within the curve of his thigh, put her arms around
him, and kissed him fully.
'That's enough teasing for now,' she said. 'Make sense of it.' 'Recall how long it takes to forge a unity between the Truth Body of
wisdom and the Form Body imprinting merit?' 'Certainly,' she said like a good scholar. 'It takes three countless
aeons.'
Wizard Prang looked puckishly (another risk taken) at his newly returned
shishya.
'It's right, of course/ he said. 'But how can we be sure it's not
five or three thousand countless aeons?' 'Well, that is the teaching.' Radha was put out. 'But what does the teaching mean? Do you really think that the difference
between three countless aeons and five countless aeons is actually two
countless aeons? These are not bananas you know. They are countless
aeons.' 'The number three is a sort of joke?'
'No. It would be if it were really a way of talking about time. Actually
it's a way of talking about the structure of the Buddha Bodies.'
Wizard Prang reminded Radha of the highest yoga tantra, by a few touchings.
Through the highest yoga tantra it is (on highest authority) possible to
achieve Nirvana, and thus the absence of rebirth, in a single lifetime.
She knew that, and responded:
'In a single lifetime. It has to be the same thing as
three countless aeons, or karma has no. meaning.' 'The same thing under some transformation. And the single lifetime itself
is three countless aeons, compared with the now as understood by quantum
mechanics, in which time is reversible in principle and in practice, still
so long as nothing moves. The same thing...' '... under some transformation,' interrupted Radha. 'What is the
transformation?' 'It is the knowledge of self that has been called enlightenment,' answered
Wizard Prang. 'When time is maya, what is change? There is no time in
which to make a transformation, never mind to live ten million lives. Thus
change is an illusion too. We are left with the notion of instantaneous
recognition. That is transformation. That is change.'
'To know a need for ten million lives, spread over three countless
aeons, removes the construct of time ...' 'And to see the aura, as I see yours now, as the spread of the probability
of your fundamental electronic particles throughout the universe ...'
'... removes the construct of space,' said Radha. 'So that is death: it
is disintegration into cosmos.' 'All right,’ the wizard said, 'but don't forget that from the vantage
point we have reached disintegraton cannot any longer be a process. There
is no time for anything to happen. There is no space in which to be
subsumed. There is only you. That you are.' 'Tat tvam asi,' murmured the Knowledge Woman, using the original ancient
Sanskrit words. 'Isn't that solipsism? Isn't it the ultimate assertion of
a consuming pathological ego?' 'Ego is separable. We established that you and I are not.'
'You and I don't seem to be separable, true enough.'
Wizard Prang touched the outlines of her face.
'That's not what I meant, but it makes a good start. Put
the two of us into the yin yang emblem. There are you and I as one, as
yoga means union. Use the next larger emblem, use it again; and again
and again ... Let our union embrace each of humanity, become humanity,
become the indivisible cosmos. THAT you are.' 'So rebirth is a metaphor.' 'Rebirth belongs in a model that our insight is not using just now.' 'So then does death,' Radha said. 'You taught me before that my death is
an event in someone else's life, and is not relevant to me. What's left?'
'The miracle and mystery of existence. It is love.'
A while later the wizard and the samayamudra wandered slowly down the
stream, their arms around each other, and passed behind the cottage to
where a dazzling white carpet of snowdrops was spread beneath the trees. Edith Sitwell wrote:
Love is not changed by death
and nothing is lost
and all in the end is harvest.
Jesus said, quoting the eighty second psalm:
I said you are gods, but
you shall die like men.
Again, he said:
The kingdom of God is within you.
One of the Vedas, the Chhandogya Upanishad, says:
That subtle essence which is
the Self of this entire world,
THAT is the Real,
THAT is the Self,
THAT you are.
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