Daily Theosophy

He had now reached a state of physical and psychological purity as never before. No physical or psychological impulse could ever bring him out of balance any more. And this is an absolute condition for becoming a really compassionate soul.

(142)

(the next day)

He noticed that he felt very healthy, and he was amazed about that. He might have expected to feel pain and tiredness in the parts of his body which had been so much under stress, and a headache. He wasn’t even hungry. It made him think that the whole experience had not been real. Still, he remembered the tunnel of yesterday and its light and the monsters and all that had happened in its tiniest details, just as clear as he remembered the day before yesterday. And he thought that if he would go back to the cave he could enter the same tunnel, and meet the same circumstances. But one could also remember a movie in detail, though it had been only flickering light on a white screen – so the fact that he remembered it as real did not proof that it was real. He became more and more convinced that the whole experience had been projected from the depths of his own being, his own mind. And one thing was sure: it had changed him for ever.

Purer and happier than ever, completely confident in the reality of the Good in the universe, he walked on, day after day, sleeping soundly night after night. How was that possible after such a negative experience? Why wasn’t he much more gloomy and afraid than before this horrible experience? His mind couldn’t answer that question. He climbed over mountains and descended into valleys, and walked sometimes for days on grassy high plateaus full of flowers and thin airs filled with many fragrances. He had a lot to think about. If the experience had not been real, then how could he distinguish it from what was really real? Then, was a dream not real, or was a dream really real? If he was in a dream which he remembered after waking up, he also remembered that inside that dream he had thought that is was really real. In the past it had even happened that he woke up from a dream, and, thinking that he was awake now, had found out after some time that he was only dreaming that he was awake – and then woke up again. And how did he know that he was not a dream himself at this very moment? Or that he himself was dreaming that he was awake? He thought deep about that. He could not solve the problem to its full depth, but he concluded that there was at least one great difference between reality and a dream, or reality and illusion. When he was in a dream, and when he met friends or other people, they, if he asked them the next day – knew nothing about it. But when he met people while awake, they all knew and remembered where they were and what they had done together. So that was the difference. He had no way (and no wish) to check whether the monsters of the tunnel where still existing, Theoretically he could have gone back, perhaps even take a camera and return with a picture – if they had been real.

Then, thinking still a bit deeper, he realized that, even though people who in reality had been together and had talked and experienced things together, never gave exactly the same report. For everyone the experience had been different. Some had remembered this part and forgotten another, while it was the other way round with somebody who had also been present. Some things had impressed one person, but hadn’t even been noticed by another. Some even knew for sure that something had happened of which the others knew nothing – his or her own fantasy had added things which he or she was not even aware of. So how reliable is reality, and how false is illusion or dream? Maybe dreams or illusions on one side and reality on the other could interpenetrate each other – but that would mean that there is no clear distinction between illusion and reality. Once he had read in one of the many books he had swallowed, that people can train to meet each other consciously in a dream, do things together, and then both remember it the next day. Is a dream like that an illusion or a reality? Can illusion influence reality in such a way that the person becomes convinced that the illusion is reality? After some time he got a bit tired of this kind of thinking. And he was happy to conclude that he was absolutely sure that he really existed, and that dreams and illusions were products of his own mind.

Yet we – I mean you the reader and I the writer – know for sure that Shano does not exist. He exists only in our mind. I have a particular picture in my mind of Shano, and if a thousand people read this and you would ask them to tell who Shano really is, how he feels and thinks, or ask them to make a drawing of Shano, all thousand people would give a somewhat different answer, and it would be a little different from my own idea about him. No writer in the world can write everything about a person even if he would be writing from morning to evening his whole life. Moreover I fancy much more than I actually write down – and you know nothing about my unexpressed fancies! Thousands, perhaps millions of thought-events and feeling-events happen within us real people all the time. My story, any story, is therefore very sketchy, were superficial, so also your image of Shano can be nothing more than sketchy.

So I just said that Shano (or any other persons written about in this book) does not exist. Still, it could be that I had taken a really existing person who I know very well personally as an example for my story. In that case there would be a real Shano. But how do you know? You can not see from my story whether it comes from my fantasy of from a real example, or a mixture. (It is only because I told you that it is my fantasy, and therefore, if you believe me, you know that the real Shano doesn’t exist.) He doesn’t exist – be he could exist. Maybe he has existed somewhere in time, or will exist in the future – but I don’t know.

Now imagine that I would declare that Shano is a really existing boy, and I would promise you to send a genuine picture of him, then … don’t you remember that earlier I wrote that Shano existed only in Adi’s dream? If Adi exists, of course. Maybe he doesn’t – why should he? – but I really believe that Adi exists, though I have never seen him. Not exactly I understand him – at least part of it is my fantasy. But he exists more really for me than Shano. What do you think? Does Adi exist or does he not exist (and the same for Praja)? But whatever I think, or whatever you think, we can be mistaken, or we can be partly right and partly mistaken. But in reality, whether Adi exists truly or not, is independent of my or your mind. Whatever I believe, truth itself doesn’t change. Because dinosaurs also existed, long before there were human beings to think of them. It may well be that I am also a dream of Adi. And that you are a dream of Adi. And that we only think that we exist independently and came into existence out of our own nature. But what we think may be wrong. What do you think, do you really exist, or don’t you really exist?

Am I, or am I not? – that is the question. Let’s take some rest from this subject now. One day, I hope, we will understand – even if it takes lifetimes. There is no doubt to which there will be no solution. So let us take rest from this subject for now. And let us enjoy together with Shano.

One day he saw another traveler, far away at the horizon, at the edge of a Juniper grove. It was the first human being he saw since he had gone into these sacred (but no longer scary) mountains.