There is so little we know, and so much we misunderstand because of our assumptions: that everything is separate rather than connected, that most things are dead instead of everything being alive, that consciousness is accidental or incidental, rather than fundamental….
When you change your assumptions, what seemed unlikely now seems obvious. Hint, guys: The world is alive, and the world is made of consciousness!
This from SchwartzReport.
P A R T T W O
Another World
August, 1979
Chapter Seven.
Experience
My room — my cell — has one window, facing south. In daytime I see the mountain, but at night the mountain is only a finger pointing to the moon. And it is the moon that I see in my imagination, by day as well as night: The moon, full silver, giving itself a halo of deep blue against the black sky, sailing clear and calm, unmoved by the tragedy and farce below.
At this great height, air is thin. Nights obscured by snowstorms are rare; cloud cover so thick as to block out the moon is scarcely less so. In the many years I have been here, I cannot recall a night whose moon was lost to cloud cover. At most, I have seen layers of cloud illumined from behind, great uneven porous blankets of grey, shining into one halo of light. But mostly the nights are clear with the light of the moon in its phases.
Chapter Six.
Escape
By the end of April I’d spent about three months learning a few Tibetan phrases that might or might not prove useful in the event—long enough to realize that to go beyond these phrases to fluency could require not months but years.
I’d carefully adopted the wearing of a monk’s robe, not merely for the sake of fitting in visually but also to save wear on my flight suit.
Oxygen was going to be a problem, obviously, since I had no way to refill my mask. The monastery puts some sort of drug into newcomers’ food, to lessen the effect of high altitude on bodies born in lower places. My careful, inconspicuous searches never turned up the drug’s storage place. Not so surprising, perhaps, since I didn’t really know what I was looking for. I’d have to do without it, and hope the residual effect of whatever was still in my system when I left would carry me past the worst.
Chapter Five.
Preparation
Sure death outside, for them. But not for me. And I had the strongest reason of all to risk it, a reason they could no longer understand except abstractly, intellectually. None of them had a ceaseless longing gnawing at them, for the simple reason that anyone they’d left behind was long dead, or much aged. Their very longevity separated them from the rest of the world, even more effectively than the surrounding mountains. I didn’t want to be separated that way from Marianne. It wasn’t heroism that made me determined to return: Death or capture seemed easier than living on without her.
Chapter Four.
Realities
“It’s me, all right. The name Bryant that he says is my right name ain’t the right one, but if you knew where to look, you’d find the old news stories about me quick enough. Not that it matters: The statutes of limitations don’t run any 30 years, and anyway it wouldn’t be so easy, extraditing me out of here.”
“But except for the names, the rest of the story is true?”
“Oh, more or less. Like Huck Finn says, he stretched it here and there, but mostly he told the truth.”
Chapter Three.
Introductions
I had a long winter and spring ahead of me before I could try to get over the mountains to India, and the monastery was not so large a place to roam. I soon used up its spaces.
I’d get up in the morning—after sleeping as late as possible and then lying in bed staring up and out at the blue‑black sky beyond my window—and wander down to the kitchen to fix myself some tea. (In those early days I sorely missed my coffee.) Then I’d make my way down to Mr. Barnard’s greenhouse, or his workshop, or I’d pace one of the little patios that open off the main buildings. Sooner or later Mr. Barnard and I would come together and we’d have a lunch, usually some thick slices of bread and butter, or perhaps a few pieces of fruit. And while we ate, and later while we sat in the library rooms or went outside for a smoke, he and I would talk.
Chapter Two.
The Monastery
Late the following morning, Mr. Barnard found me lying in bed staring up at the ceiling, wondering how long the trek back would take. Provided the place wasn’t an elaborate Chinese trap, I figured I’d stumbled into probably the only place in Tibet that would help me get back over the border into India or Pakistan. I figured they’d give me provisions, and maybe even a guide. Working our way by night, moving with someone who knew the terrain, I figured five nights, maybe. I couldn’t get over the good luck that had brought me safely here. Assuming that the place was what it seemed.
And suddenly there was Mr. Barnard at the door. “Well,” he said, beaming benevolently down at me like a Buddha with a mustache, “when I looked in on you a while back, you looked like you were working hard on catching up on your sleep. How are you feeling now?”