Daily Theosophy

His only wish was to make people happy with his music. And he had, of course, noticed Shano, and played for him specifically, without mentioning it, or even looking at him.

(102)

(Crish)

But to everything is an end, and the musicians left, no doubt to perform elsewhere, but they did not say where that was. Everything came back to normal. Life went on day after day. It was full of light and full of moments of joy, but still not very exciting for a young person, and there was a half unconscious desire in Shano’s heart. About four miles from his home along the road a little higher up on the hillside Shano met a boy who was perhaps three years older that he. Shano was eleven then. His name was Crish. Crish had a little bit of an attitude shining through his face, which gave away that he thought himself a little better than other people, and especially boys younger than himself. But he had great stories, and Shano adored him for that. He noticed the somewhat haughty attitude of the boy, but didn’t pay attention to it, because he thought, that even though the boy was three years older than he, he still had to learn a lot in life, and was not consciously aware of his attitude, and that sooner or later he would overcome that attitude. So it didn’t matter now. Crish’s father was a tradesman, who organized the goods being transported between different villages, and even from the city. There was a small library near Shano’s school, and sometimes a selection of new books came in, which was always the best moment of the year for Shano, and he could not stop before he had read all the books. One book was about another language, English, and Shano managed to learn the alphabet and quite a lot of that language of the far away city, though he did not know how to pronounce the words. In his later life this knowledge would become of great value. Crish’s father was responsible for getting the rare goods imported from the city, and twice in the past year Crish had accompanied him. The books where selected by some learned people in the village on basis of catalogs brought from the city by Crish’s father, who himself understood little of such things. It included school books of course. Most of the books were on history and philosophy, about ancient wise people who had lived thousands of years ago, and some contained pictures of strange landscapes, animals, plants, and, best of all, so-called Nasa-books on astronomy, full of pictures made of other planets and stars, by satellites with space telescopes, it said – whatever ‘satellites’ might be. Others were stories, of journeys by discoverers, mountaineers and kings and princesses. But these elderly people of course never collected anything that showed the civilized society very clearly, and in vain you would search for books on cars, airplanes or computers or modern society. They didn’t want the youth to be spoiled.

At school he learned all the things about chemistry, math, physics, biology and so on that all children all over the world were taught at the higher grades. He had heard some person visiting his father say that all they taught at school was complete nonsense, and only represented outworn ideas, and that even some city schools where better than their school. Shano had no idea what that man meant. He liked school and could learn a lot about the universe. He was taught that molecules consisted of atoms, and that atoms themselves consisted of smaller particles, like a nucleus consisting of a cluster of protons and neutrons – who themselves could be split but that was it. At that point one had found the absolute smallest possible particle, or rather ‘vortex of energy’, turning left or right in high speeds, and could turn upside down. Around the nucleuses of the atoms circled particles of electric energy, called electrons. They were so small and so fast that nobody could ever know where there were at what moment. Of chemistry he learned that by chance processes some atoms called ions – those who missed one or more electrons, or had too many of them, were electrically attracted to each other and exchanged or shared their electrons. These were just the ultimate properties of matter. Matter had no consciousness, no soul, and atoms and molecules could make no choices (though silently Shano doubted that), but answered automatic laws, and only by chance they were combined to make living beings. It all seemed strange to Shano who saw that all around him was living, searching for happiness, and that people where attracted to each other by sympathy, not by automatic electricity. Once he said that to his teacher, but the good old man had petted Shano’s beautiful hairs and said to him: “Don’t ask such things. You are only a child with a childish mind. Later you understand better.” Despite their long beards and hairs – that was more natural, they said – people of the valleys and mountainsides where not aware that in some respects the school was very old-fashioned, and that science had progressed beyond these viewpoints. Nevertheless, even so Shano found the universe most amazing and attractive, and he simply wanted to know everything, but sometimes he thought that the teachers themselves didn’t really know where they were talking about, because they had never learned to think for themselves.

Crish had never stayed in the city for more than a day or two, but he had seen it with his own eyes. He hadn’t understood much of what the people where doing, but he made up his own interpretations and stories. And this is what Shano got to hear.

Every house had many lights, and the lights did not have to be lit, and they did not have any fuel. They were electic or something like that, and went on by themselves when someone pressed a button in the wall on the other side of the room, or by themselves when the sun was setting, or when the inhabitant of the house would tell them to go on. People could talk to each other without going out, and even see each without going out to see each other, even without standing up from where they were sitting. Merely the mentioning of a name of a friend or colleague, even when they were 20,000 km apart, sometimes even up in the air or in outer space a thousand miles above the earth, a contact was established and one could hear and see each other, and with some extra provisions they could even smell and feel each other – it made no difference whether your friends were close by or far away. You could talk with them just as easily. For those who wanted to talk privately, they had made some strange looking boxes, called fones or mobels connected with a special pair of very light goggles (some with nose-like extensions for smell-communication), through which only the speaker and the listener could communicate without being overheard and disturbed by others, and it did not matter whether you were in a remote area in the mountain snows or in the middle of the city, in deserts on seas, or even under water, or in the air or in space. The people were driving on, or inside, wheeled ‘tools’, sometimes, two, or three or four wheels. Many had doors and you could go inside. And the ‘car,’ as it was called, if you put it on otomapic (or something like that) you only had to say where you wanted to go, and, except to very remote areas, the ‘car’ would bring you there much faster that a bird could fly. You could also order the car to come on its own, if perchance you needed it and had not brought it. The cars needed energy for their activities, which could be added to it in various ways, but you did not have to feed them. In fact they didn’t even have a mouth to eat or drink. This was really miraculous. There were also such cars who could fly without moving their wings. That, at least, Shano could imagine, because he had seen cars like that high up in the air above his own valley, always disappearing above and behind the snow-capped mountains. Shano and other boys listened with their mouths open. They almost forgot to breathe. Did Crish fancy all these stories, or could they be true. Indeed they had seen flying cars, and they knew from very ancient stories that gods could fly in cars, and that they did not have to walk to go somewhere else, and that gods knew of each others whereabouts and the whereabouts of the world without even having to come down from their lofty mountain peaks, which peaks were much higher than the flying cars they had seen, and would even reach up to the sun. Gods could also go to the sun and other planets, and move in seconds over the whole earth, according to the ancient stories. So maybe there were some kind of gods in that city were Crish had been. That was an idea that Crish liked, and from now on he believed that he, as the only one among all of them, had been among the gods. That is why he was sure that he was better than all the other boys. Shano was not so sure about that, but he didn’t say it. He wanted to see it for himself, later, when he was big enough. The problem was that his parents and none of other elderly people would ever allow him. Because they believed that the city was the place of evil, where the devil and his thousands of assistants lived, and where everyone was very unhappy. But, after all, who can stop an adventurous child? Nothing, except fear perhaps. But heroes have no fear. They have vigilance of course, and a sane and intelligent mind, otherwise they would get in great trouble. But heroes have no fear for things that other people who themselves have never seen what they tell, tell – however eerie.

Now, skipping a few years of Shano’s life, he became fourteen. His desire to discover the whole world had grown bigger and bigger.