(3)

The weather continues to be cool and mild here in my small town, much to my delight.  At night the rain falls in slow, gentle strokes, and during the day the sky is full of roiling clusters of heavy grey clouds with only a few chinks of blue showing in between.  I've gone to the cemetery for three days in a row now, sitting under a tree with my legs stretched out, taking my ease in the quiet of its shelter.  The tree I've been sitting under lately is very convenient for the purpose of solitude, it being located in an older section of the cemetery that's unfrequented by visitors to graves or even, with occasional exceptions, by any of the walkers who sometimes come here to stroll.  I sometimes take a book along with me for company, but don't seem to get much reading done; mostly I just sit and look at the world around me.  I look at the black ants scrabbling about.  I watch the fat, heavy bumblebees droning along, and the butterflies cavorting.  Occasionally a fly zooms by.  Mosquitoes land on my arm.  They bite.  I scratch.

After awhile my attention is drawn to the tree roots growing beside me, under me, all around me; my eyes follow them as they funnel their way into the ground.  The bark on them is cracked, scabbed over here and there with small, green patches of . . . what?  Some species of moss?  Lichen?  Algae perhaps?  I don't know, and feel much too lazy to care.  The dirt surrounding the roots is, I notice, full of a minute jumble of refuse:  crumbling pieces of twigs and bark; yellow blades of dried-up grass; bits of woody seed casings; fragments of dead leaves; all of which can be found in increasingly smaller and smaller pieces, until at last they become all but indistinguishable from the dirt.  The roots themselves seem to have such an intimate connection with the dirt, to be so closely akin to it, that I find myself wondering what it is exactly marking the difference between them.  Obviously, one is "alive," the other not; but what is it, precisely, which defines this difference?  What, in other words, is this thing called "life"?  It's such a common thing – found everywhere and thus easy to take for granted – but what is it?  It has always seemed to me the mystery of mysteries.  I can identify, of course, the more obvious differences between living and nonliving things:  living things carry on a process of growth through the internal transformation of energy; grow in a manner which causes them to become organized in increasingly complex ways; maintain a consistent, self-regulating, self-contained organization; and reproduce.  I have read of the origins of life:  of how certain fundamental elements, created back in the dim recesses of time, combined to form amino acids, which then formed proteins, these proteins evolving into yet more complex molecules which had the ability to self-replicate – etc, etc.  I do not understand this process well, but it seems to me to have occurred under conditions so wonderfully fortuitous, and to have followed a development so amazingly improbable (though not at all impossible, considering that it took place over a period of billions of years) as to strike my layman's mind as the miracle of miracles.  Life!  Just think of it:  at some point in an unfathomably distant past, tiny molecules made of elemental matter suddenly formulated themselves in such a way as to "come alive."  What strange genius was it that led to this?  My mind is too little to tell.  But the fact that the conditions which led to the formation of life occurred once and will never again occur on earth seems to me but one more reason as to why the care of this planet ought to every human being's first and foremost concern.  Should we not honor our parent?  It did, after all, give birth to us, a fact which ought to impress even the most diehard egoist.  Well . . . perhaps we shall learn to yet.  Right now we are more like a bunch of churlish teenagers, hell bent on breaking free of our parental bonds, whatever the cost.

But none of this answers the question of what life is.  Closing my eyes and probing deep within me, what I seem to perceive at my innermost core is a sort of crackling of electricity, a humming and a buzzing of energy, around which, or from which, grows a self – or rather, many selves, for I seem always to sense a number of them within me.  There is, to take the briefest of inventories, a self of primitive desire and instinctual need; an emotional self; a mental self; and, of course, a physical self.  What happens to these various selves when I die?  The physical self, obviously, ceases to function.  As to those other selves I've mentioned, I suppose it depends on how profoundly they are connected to, to what degree they stem from, my physicality.  Being a believer in the concept of karma and reincarnation, I suppose I must therefore also believe that, upon the death of my physical body, there must continue to exist at least one other shell formed from that fundamental energy which imbues me with life – this shell consisting of my karmic attributes and containing within it the ability to reincarnate itself into a new, physical body.  I must admit that I'm not particularly happy postulating an idea which depends upon belief alone, preferring instead the kind of knowledge which is attained through direct observation and personal experience – though in my defense I would add that, in a sense, my knowledge of reincarnation and karma was attained in this fashion.  I remember the first time I read of these matters.  It happened when I was in my late teens:  one day I opened a book on Eastern religions, and my immediate response to the ideas I found there was:  "Of course these things are true – reincarnation, karma; undoubtedly, this is how existence works."  There was for me no question in the matter:  it was, I felt, something that I had always known, and had merely forgotten for awhile.  It wasn't that I had grown up in a household where such beliefs were commonly discussed; neither do I think that I responded to this particular set of beliefs because it answered the impulse of some peculiar psychological need.  I was curious about spirituality and so began to investigate the matter; and yet, of all the spiritual systems I read about, it was only those which included the concepts of reincarnation and karma that struck me as having the force of truth.  Of course, were someone to tell me that I had likely been exposed to these concepts at some earlier period of my life and then buried the memory, later transforming it into something akin to a revelation, or were they to claim that the concept of reincarnation merely provided me a fortuitous answer to anxieties that I, along with most other human beings, have concerning my own mortality, I could not deny that these were valid possibilities.  Some might even suggest a more scientific explanation for my belief:  it could be, they might say, that the very uniqueness of personality which seemed to me to point to a causality beyond biological determination or environmental influence may in reality be ascribed to exactly those factors.  Out of millions of possible sperm cells, thousands of possible ova, was each individual made; into one specific set of environmental circumstances was each individual born.  Thus each and every one of us is, in fact, unutterably unique, and consequently feel ourselves to be so; why look to reincarnation and karma to provide further justification for this feeling?

It's a difficult argument to answer; and yet I feel compelled, against all reason, to argue for a deeper causality than science can provide.  I base my argument upon my understanding that there exists within me a manifestation of energy which, while it may be perceived by reason and be accompanied by reason's insistence that it alone is responsible for the discernment of truth, I know to exist within me independent of reason.  How do I know this?  Again I must argue in favor of using the brain as a sort of super-sensory organ as opposed to one which gets trapped in the illusory effects of ego.  Used in this way, the brain's capacity for perceiving becomes simply another aspect of my biological totality, and thus understands that, while it is a part of that totality, it does not and can not claim for itself a generative function with regard to the whole.  Hence my conclusion that the sense of "knowingness" I had when I first read about reincarnation has, in my opinion, a greater likelihood of providing for its validity than any rational, reasonable argument I might make.  What others call faith I would call experiential knowledge.  Unlike faith, experiential knowledge is not dogmatic, and by definition ought never to become so.  It is, rather, flexible, elastic, shaping itself to fit that growth in knowledge which any given experience brings.

I have also had, in the course of my lifetime, a number of out-of-body experiences.  Obviously, I cannot claim to know with any certainty that these have provided me with an accurate depiction of what happens to us after we die.  Still, it does not seem unreasonable to suggest that they may at least provide a clue.  While I was "out" of myself physically, I still felt myself to be inhabiting a body – a metaphysical body – and would describe myself as having been "alive" in that body according to the commonsense definition of the term.  That is, I felt myself to be a cohesive, self-maintaining entity, and quite knowably "me."  But I also felt myself to have, as it were, the status of a mere infant with regard to my ability to manipulate my experience while inhabiting that body.  That is to say, I felt that I had the power of self-volition, of thought and emotion in some form, but that these powers were nascent, their active utilization occurring in modes sufficiently different from those I was used to in my waking state as to require a period of learning unavailable to me at that time.  However, I also felt myself to be in close proximity to other out-of-body entities, and these seemed to evidence complete functionality in their ethereal surroundings.  Having had such experiences I feel that I may lay a claim as to their validity, to my own satisfaction if to no one else's; and although I cannot prove that the other entities I came in contact with did not also have physical bodies in existence somewhere, it seems to me unlikely.  Even if they weren't physically dead, the mere fact that they and I were able to leave our physical bodies and inhabit bodies of another kind argues at least for the possibility that physicality is not our only resource with regard to "life" and the status of being "alive."

As I sat under that tree in the cemetery earlier today, back propped up against its trunk, legs stuck out before me, I began to grow interested in watching the haphazard journey of an ant scrambling across the surface of a nearby tombstone.  Up and down, back and forth, blindly, frantically, it ran.  I found myself remembering how fascinated I was as a child by ants and bees:  I used to read every book written about them I could find.  The subservience of the individual insect to the collective whole of nest or hive intrigued me endlessly, presumably because I already understood at some subconscious level how like to that, and yet how different, my own relationship to society would be.  The ant scrambled back and forth, back and forth over the tombstone, compelled by some force not the least bit intelligible to the ant itself and yet entirely at its service.  It must be, I thought, more or less the same for human beings.  I sat up then and looked at the engraving on the stone.  It read:

EFFIE ADELAIDE MANSFIELD

1856-1909

Just that.  Just those briefly stated facts of name and dates were all that remained of a whole human life.  Somewhere, perhaps, the Effie that was lives again.  But in another sense the Effie that was is no more, and never shall be again.

I lay back down, watching the thick, grey clouds scudding across the sky, watching the birds search for worms and bugs in the dirt, hearing the wind ruffle the leaves of the trees and stir up little eddies in the tufts of grass around me.  I thought about Effie awhile, and then I thought:  "You know, I wouldn't much mind being dead myself today.  To take a nice long snooze in the cool, cool shade of the earth . . ."

This is all I want, really:  to lie about on a little plot of ground somewhere in the shade of a welcoming tree, to look upon nature and observe its ways, to think my thoughts and wonder my wonders . . .  Life is simply too short for anything less.

Later, as I was making my way back through town towards home, I ran into an old coworker of mine.  When I asked him how he was doing and what he'd been up to lately, he told me that he had just received notice of his eligibility for low-income housing and soon planned to go out looking for a new place to live – an apartment, even a house perhaps, which he could expect to rent for very little money, the main portion being paid by the state.  I was amazed.  It had never occurred to me to investigate such a possibility.  It came to me suddenly that it had never occurred to me to investigate any of the social benefits that might come with being poor and that, through them, it may in fact be possible for me to find a way in which to continue living the life to which I have now grown accustomed:  the life of a recluse, an indigent – a bum!  I've read of monks who lived in temples or in shacks, seeking with their begging bowls a subsidiary existence from people in nearby villages; but there is, of course, no provision for such a life in the town where I live.  Or is there?  Might I not work some menial job – my own version of "fetching wood and carrying water" – and seek alms from the state?  I see no reason why not.

I feel as if I suddenly know, at long last, how it is that I want to live my life, and wonder if it might not just be possible for me to do so.  To be a recluse, a bum, a layman's monk – this, in large degree, is what I already am; and this is what I want to continue to be.  It's true that society may not much appreciate my goals.  It's also true that society adheres to the principle that it is not obligated to support the goals of its individual members unless they are willing in turn to support the goals of the society in which they live.  But ask me this:  Do I care?  And I will reply:  Why should I, when society cares so little for all that I consider to be of the utmost importance, and requires me to support that for which I have so little respect?  We are working, it would seem, at cross-purposes; and if neither party involved quite trusts the other, which of us will admit that we are not without just cause?

INNOCENCE IS AN IGNORANT CHILD