'Shall we be using the coffee coloured
teapot or the tea coloured coffee pot?' asked Toby, who was setting the
table. 'That would seem to depend on whether you prefer
to drink coffee or tea,' said Wizard Prang from his work bench where he
was carefully preparing to dissect a dichotomy. 'To be
honest,' said Toby, 'I'd rather have my Toby jug.'
'Always be honest,' the wizard turned and said. 'Moreover, go and fill
your jug. Furthermore,' he added, 'you may fill my chalice too. I'm not in
the mood for coffee or tea.'
He watched Toby find the
necessary utensils and ingredients, and turned back to his experiment. In
the meantime, however, the dichotomy had escaped.
'Bother,' said Wizard Prang.
Toby had been invited to
stay for lunch, and the wizard had prepared a dish that he called a Mess
of Pottage. He usually made this for Toby, each time in the mistaken
belief that he had never done so before. Thus he thought it was bright of
the boy to comment that it was better than watching television, which was
a Pot of Message, whereas Toby had had months in which to formulate the
crack. Clearly, Toby was already embarked upon a trail blazed by such
diverse characters as Socrates and Oscar Wilde.
'Perny
told me,' Toby said as the Wizard was dishing up, 'that a chef once asked
you how he could be perfectly certain that all his dishes were superb. She
said that you advised him that to be perfectly certain, he would himself
have to eat whatever he cooked the lot.' 'Isn't that
true?' the wizard was ladling stuff onto Toby's plate. 'If people ask
precise questions, I have to give precise answers. Mere lasting wouldn't
have done it, because the very next spoonful might contain something
nasty. You don't have to be a mathematical statistician to see that my
advice was exactly correct.' 'Yes,' Toby admitted. 'But
Perny said that the chef was so impressed, that when he had some guests
round for a gourmet dinner, he had in the end to send out for pizzas for
them.' 'He did all right for himself, though, wouldn't
you say?' Wizard Prang sucked a tooth. 'You will come to understand Perny
in time.' 'Do you love Perny?'
It
was such an innocent question.
He answered gently: 'I
love all my shishyas.' 'The new Spanish one has been
speaking to me. She's nice. She told me her name is Esperanza.'
'So it is. Unusual,' added Wizard Prang, 'since most Latin
Americans are called Mira.'
'How can that be?' 'I'm blowed if I know,’ the wizard
replied, 'but if you listen in to their conversations, they call each
other Mira all the time. And I have gone into rooms full of people, and
shouted 'Mira' as a test: everyone turns round. Q.E.D.’
Toby emptied out the last of the tomato ketchup onto his
Mess of Pottage.
Eventually he said: 'You're having me on.'
'Yes,' said the wizard from the other side of the room, as
he fetched a new bottle of tomato ketchup.
Toby looked
up at him with his eyebrows arched, and said threateningly that he would
ask Esperanza about this Mira business.
'Good,' said
Wizard Prang, 'always check things out.' 'Like always
be honest,' echoed Toby.
He was holding the new bottle
of ketchup over his plate, and thumping it vigorously on the base. Nothing
happened. The wizard took the bottle gently from Toby's
hand, and set it upright on the table. He put his own hand out, and turned
Toby's head towards him.
'What is Newton's Third Law?'
'Action and reaction are equal and opposite,' Toby
answered promptly. 'Very good.' Wizard Prang was
appreciative. 'What do you mean, very good, you
horrible old wizard,' Toby risked. 'It was perfect.'
The horrible old wizard slapped his thigh and roared with laughter.
'It was Indeed,' he said when he had recovered his breath.
'Just shows how we fall into meaningless linguistic habits.'
He handed Toby the bottle of tomato ketchup, and asked him
to consider what he had been doing. Toby got it at once. By banging the
bottle on its base, he had been driving the ketchup backwards into the
bottle. Wizard Prang told Toby not to be embarrassed: he had seen cabinet
ministers and eminent scientists do the same thing. He showed Toby how to
hold the bottle head down with his left hand, and to tap it gently under
the neck with his right hand. When this operation
resulted in a sudden flood of ketchup all over Toby's food, and after
Wizard Prang had stopped laughing all over again, they fell to talking
about Toby's holiday in Ireland.
'Did you like my
postcard?' asked Toby.
Wizard Prang fetched the
postcard from the mantelpiece where he had propped it up. He ate very
little in general, and had in particular finished.
'Greatly,' he said.
He had in advance of Toby's holiday
explained a lot about Irish mythology, and alerted him to the amazing
flowered hedgerows in the south. He read the postcard again.
It said:
The king of Ireland has
slipped the Ring
of Kerry on his finger, and gazed
into the fuchsia. Lots of love, Toby
'I suppose,' the wizard said, 'that you have plenty of
trouble at school with your imaginative writing. You are going to have to
be careful about exams. Adult examiners expect that flights of fancy and
the tendency to pun have been well and truly suppressed by school leaving
age.' 'I just get clouted,' Toby told him. 'But I'm not
giving up. What's the adult world all about, anyway?'
'The adult world is a world in which grown up people behave like
children,' Wizard Prang replied.
They had moved to
their chairs by now, Toby thought for a long time about the wizard's
dictum. In a way, it explained a lot for him. Some people were wiser than
others though. Adults looked more or less stupid, depending ...
Wizard Prang silently followed his silent thinking, and
was not surprised when Toby suddenly said: 'it's only a matter of degree.'
'I learned from one of my teachers Norbert about that
solution,' he said after a proper pause. 'A dose of arsenic may be either
medicinal or fatal. It's only a matter of degree.'
It
was Toby's turn to laugh. It made a break. Without comment he got up and
refilled both jug and chalice. Then:
'Speaking of medical matters' (and this really was Toby's
day for cheek) 'I don't notice you taking care of cholesterol, alcoholic
calories, and all sorts of things like that.' 'If I had
taken notice of medical advice, I would either by now be dead, or still
alive having achieved no work. We are our own mentors, Toby. It is proper
to listen to the advice of doctors; however, they know about medicine, not
about you. So it's even more important to listen to yourself. Your body
will tell you what to do if you're listening.' 'But all
those articles, propaganda, TV progs ... it's everywhere.'
'It certainly is,' Wizard Prang said sternly. 'And that's
not even the doctors' fault. It is the result of our cultural habit of
extolling, even idolizing, the body. After people lost religion, there was
nowhere else to turn to but themselves. This is an age of deeply felt
narcissism.' 'One of my teachers says that if we can
have a fault finding system for cars, we can have a fault finding system
for ourselves. She calls it prophylactic medicine.'
'Certainly,' said Wizard Prang. 'But be careful lest the media hype of
that, which churns money into many respectable pockets, blinds you to your
really divine gift. That is metasystemic.' 'Well,' Toby
said, 'you explained that word to me. But I don't know about the divine
gift.' 'You have a fault-finding system for monitoring
your fault-finding system.'
The afternoon was still,
and murmurous with nature.
Toby said after a long time:
'I see.'
But he didn't really. That would come later.
So the time finally came when Toby tried again to sneak up
on the question that was really on his mind not least because a small
Welsh village is zestfully full of joyous if hurtful gossip.
'What's a womanizer?' Toby asked.
Wizard Prang thought for a time, because he well understood what had
prompted the question. Then he said gravely:
'A womanizer is a man who is attractive to women as
described by a man who isn't.'
Toby grinned at him. Then:
'You weren't embarrassed when I blurted out whether you love Perny.'
'No. Should I have been?' 'And you love
Blodwyn, and I expect Pam Mee, and now Esperanza too? And before them Inge
and Solange and…' 'Shh, shh,' Wizard Prang advised.
'Silica Brick too, I expect.' Toby finally calmed down.
'It is my job to love all my shishyas: it includes you
too, you know.' 'Are we talking about love making when
we say "love", about weddings and all those soppy things? And how could
any of that include me?' 'Take it easy,' said Wizard
Prang. 'Well, I'm not the only one who notices that all
your apprentices are young boys or women. People talk. And what happens to
young girls and grown up men?' 'I see. I'm glad you
mentioned it. Actually, it's incredibly simple. Let's recharge our
glasses, and go out to watch the sunset.'
Wizard Prang
took with them a poster of the yin yang symbol:
 |
'We have talked about the difference between men and
women before. You already know what are stupidly called "the facts of
life". And I have told you that the word yoga means union. Hence this
beautiful yin yang symbol. There is a union between yourself and
nature yourself and god if you wish. There is a union between yourself
and fellow men, and also (believe me) between yourself and yourself.
Above all yes, I really mean above all there is the union of man and
woman. This does not necessarily have any bearing on the
sentimentality of our age, which you called "weddings and soppy things
like that". No doubt it has to do with sex, however.' |
Toby was very calm now, and thinking hard.
'I don't want to tell you about my experience with girls so far. It
doesn't amount to much though. I do begin to know that sex is an
enormously powerful business. But you talk about union as if there were
something much more important about it than sex.'
Wizard Prang smiled at Toby and said softly: 'Oh, yes, there is. People
confuse sexuality with lust-youality.'
'I think I'm getting lost.'
'Then let's go back to the question that was on your mind which as I said
has a very simple answer.'
Wizard Prang waved gently to the yin yang symbol.
'It is appropriate for men and women to be together,' he said, 'and to
teach each other. That's why my older shishyas are women. I teach you, a
young man, because you are not yet intimately comfortable with women as
you just indicated. I don't teach very young girls, because they are not
yet intimately comfortable with men.'
'What happens to us me, Graham, Dafydd when we get older then?'
'If you want to stay with this learning,' said Wizard Prang, 'I shall send
you to a Knowledge Woman. If you want to know what a Knowledge Woman is,
look around ... the shishyas are Knowledge Women in training.'
'Where did your shishyas come from?'
'Well, of course, some arrived by guidance. But others were trained by a
Knowledge Woman and sent on to me. I train you, and send you on to a
Knowledge Woman. Do you see it now?'
'It's tantric yoga, isn't it?'
'Ultimately, yes. So far, I'm putting you onto the royal road, which is
raja yoga.'
'But tantric yoga is a form of sex?'
'Sexuality is not lust-youality remember? You ought not to take pleasure
without conscience, or perhaps it means conscientiousness.'
'It?'
'Yes. That is a quotation from Gandhiji's catalogue of the seven deadly
sins.'
'Please tell me all that,' Toby said, 'but first of all ... I know you are
talking about a man whom school calls Mahatma Gandhi. Why do you always
refer to him as Gandhiji?'
'Mahatma means "great soul". It is because he was a mahatma that I call
him Gandhiji the 'ji' is a mark of profound respect, that's all.'
'Did you ever see him in the flesh?' Toby asked.
'Twice,' said Wizard Prang.
They were both silent for a long time. Wizard Prang eventually recited the
seven deadly sins according to Gandhiji. Dusk was building around them,
and Toby was comfortable in the double lotus position that the wizard had
taught his yet flexible limbs.
Wizard Prang meditated for sometime before and after each utterance,
taking a sip of wine and water in between.
Here are Gandhiji's seven deadly sins:
-
Wealth without work,
-
Pleasure without conscience,
-
Knowledge without character,
-
Commerce without morality,
-
Science without humanity,
-
Worship without sacrifice,
-
Politics without principle.
Wizard Prang had just finished talking to Toby about Gandhiji's fifth
deadly sin science without humanity when Perny came in. It was appropriate
that she should arrive, because Toby would not have understood what the
wizard would have gone on to say about the sixth deadly sin.
Perny was in a strange state. Her feet were bare, the split skirt of her
Chinese dress made her thigh shine, the bodice was mostly unbuttoned; her
hair was all over the place, and her eyes were wild.
Perny embraced Wizard Prang, and gave Toby a perfunctory kiss. She
collected a dark beer and joined them.
'What have you been doing?'
Laughter rang out because Perny and Toby had taken a good look at each
other, and had asked exactly the same question together.
'I have been growing up a bit,' Toby said, when the jollity had subsided.
'Yes; I can see it,' said Perny, looking at him closely.
'And you look different too.'
'I have been travelling, Toby,' she replied.
He knew what the word meant. It is sukshma sharira in Sanskrit. But to
know what a word means is not necessarily to understand the concept that
it names and Toby knew that too.
He saw that it was time for him to leave. Perny gave Toby a big and non
perfunctory hug. He saw her quite differently tonight. Was it because he
was growing up, or because she had been travelling, or because Wizard
Prang had taught him something new?
When they had seen him off, Perny took the wizard's hands in hers, and put
on her gorgeous grin.
'How do I tell you?' she asked.
'You don't have to tell me anything,' the wizard said, 'because all six of
your chakras are spinning in wondrous harmony. Let's go into the
meditation room: you are ready to handle kundalini through the crown
chakra, the seventh, the metachakra, the thousand petalled lotus.'
Perny put her arms around Wizard Prang, and her head on his chest, and
hung on for a long time.
'Is this really it?' she asked.
'Oh yes,' he said softly, stroking her hair. Just be brave and I shall see
you through.'
Perny bathed herself, and changed her clothes, putting on only a single
light robe, while Wizard Prang did all the room-tidying, candle lighting,
incense burning, flower placing chores.
Hours passed in there ... or maybe days.
Perny glimpsed for the first time her own divinity.
"I said you are gods," said Jesus, quoting in his turn the Psalms.
Wizard
Prang knew his role also knowing that there should be no worship without
sacrifice. It was Gandhiji's sixth commandment, after all. His practice
stemmed from the same far older tradition. It all goes back maybe five
maybe seven thousand years.
As if that means anything, Perny now realized.
The time was now approaching when Perny would leave Wizard Prang's
apprenticeship, as shishya. It scared her a little to know that she would
soon be ready to act independently.
They were cuddled up on the sofa watching daylight infiltrate the room,
after a tiring night of tidying up exhausted spells.
Perny was sleepy. She smiled and said:
'So the years with you have been some sort of foreplay.'
She broke out laughing.
'I saw that foreplay to some men is just "Wake up".'
The wizard picked her up.
'Foreplay,' he said in his most magisterial tone, 'is everything that
happens between one significant encounter and the next.'
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