DUALITY: The World of Lies

by Paul Barufaldi

  Gahre recognized him or at least thought he did. The wooden statue with mossy feet that had come to life before him, this was him! They met by the fire at the center of the encampment. The man seemed amiable and very pleased indeed to see him.

  “Sit, young one, sit! How long have you have been up and about?”

  He spoke with an acute accent, but appeared to be fluent in Gahre's northern dialect.

  “Not long, kind stranger.” Gahre followed his cue and sat beside the fire.

  “I see you are walking normally, young one. I was concerned, as the injury to your foot was fairly serious. But between the treatments I administered and your robust life-essence, it seems you are well into recovery. Have you any abdominal pain?”

  “Yes, I experienced some after drinking water.”

  “You must drink more! I will prepare a medicinal tea.” He continued to speak as he set about ladling water into the hanging kettle and searching about for the components for the brew. “You were struck by a deathly water adder with a neurotoxin so potent it would kill most men in an hour. I believe you were under its lethal effects much longer than that. Your nerves were gravely poisoned and your internal organs suffered much damage. It took me some while to diagnose, and you were far too delirious to be of any help. I was able to match the bite marks and the symptoms to the species of the serpent from a tomb here in this temple's archives, and which by good fortune this temple held in its stores the reagents to counteract it.”

  “You are doctor, kind stranger?”

  “I am a man of medicine, among other things.”

  “I thought you were a Buddha when I came upon you.”

  The man laughed. “No traveler, I would never lay claim to such an eminent title. I am a seeker of enlightenment though, and when you found me I was deep in meditation. I am Jokhon, of the southern realms, ascetic and seer. I take it by your tongue, you are of the region to the north and east of here, perhaps Tulan or its surrounding territories?”

  “Aye, ascetic , I am Gahre of Tulan, Son of Danu. I don't know how to express my gratitude for the aid you have given me. Surely you saved my life and that is the measure of my debt to you.”

  The ascetic shrugged. “Please, I do not trade in favor or debts. You would have done the same for me. And I believe that it is by no mere chance our paths did cross, journeyman. Even in the weakened state you arrived to me in, I saw a magnificent aura about you, of such potency as I've not before witnessed, that same vital essence from which your body has formed to such sublime perfection. It was with great enthrallment I plied my arts to such a specimen. I am overcome with joy that I may now know your mind. You spoke, you know, dazed in delirium, upon many topics. Demons you talked of, The World of Lies, Justice, even Dharma. I could not otherwise make sense of your mutterings lo these many days, but it gave me an indication of what concerns occupied the basest regions of your mind.”

  Gahre was puzzled. “Many days, ascetic ? Did I not arrive to you last night?”

  The ascetic chuckled. “Bright one, look how your wounds have healed, well beyond what five days should accomplish, let alone one!”

  Five days seemed hard to believe!

  “Ascetic , my recollection is undoubtedly rife with distortion, but it seems when I first came upon you, you were a carving of wood with moss and lichen growing over your feet. Yet here I find you now, a living man.”

  “I am seer, young one. I had been planted there in that spot for months deep in meditation. As you see, these are the grounds of a Dharma temple, and barracks for the pilgrims who will come later in the summer season. The rest of the year I am the lone inhabitant of this place.”

  Gahre hardly knew where to begin. “Tell me of this discipline you cultivated that allows you to reside rooted in stillness for months on end, alone in the wild, covered by winter snows and spring moss!”

  “Through years of discipline such a state may be cultivated in the body where metabolism and circulation are slowed nearly to stasis, not entirely unlike the way a bear hibernates in the winter. All systems are conserved in an aura of static energy derived from the habitat the monk meditates within, essentially becoming as natural a component of that habitat as any common stone would be. This is called assimilating to nature by way of mind extension and internal alchemy.”

  Gahre had heard tales of such fantastic feats, but had always taken them to be highly exaggerated. Months on end without food or water, exposed to the elements. It bordered on the supernatural.

  “You are a Dharma monk, then, yes?”

  “Dharma? Well, yes, in my youth I knew I was destined to be a holy man, and my first foray into wisdom was to join a monastic order. I followed my calling with vigor, memorizing the scriptures, performing the chants, and taking my proper place in the society of my brothers. Yet, something was wrong...”

  “I bet I know, kind one, what that something was. It's the same corruption that is found in any gathering of men under any doctrine,” Gahre interjected.

  The ascetic looked into him with peaked curiosity. “Yes, that is a very general yet very apt assessment. How has your young mind come to such clarity of a universal truth?”

  Gahre relayed something about himself and laid out the broad strokes of the conflict he had faced with the authorities before coming here.

  “So you are not of The Order?” asked the ascetic , surprised.

  “Quite the contrary, I am at bitter odds with them, and have vowed to uncover their secrets.”

  “That is a dangerous path, young one, but you seem to have a proclivity for dangerous paths, so I won't attempt to dissuade you from it. As for The Order and their secrets, there is a rationale to why they shroud Truth from the masses. But as a seer, they can't keep anything from me.”

  “You are possessed of Forbidden Knowledge because you see the beyond?” Gahre asked. “What is it that you see, and by what manner do you see it? By your eyes or by way of your wisdom?”

  “By way of a gift,” the ascetic answered. “And if you seek wisdom, young one, I will give you freely what I have of it. I left the monastery and the path of Dharma, because it led to the same narrow place, of ritual, routine, chanting, manner of speaking... til you could not tell one of us monks from another. The Dharma, like all doctrine, is a cone, wide upon entering yet narrows and becomes ever constricting by its end. I was conformed, molded, and mind-controlled by it. The ritual, the prayer, the memes and platitudes, the worldly politics of the monastery... these were but the husk of that divine truth I sought in the beginning. Such is my experience with doctrine. From there I joined a movement of theists and took their system to heart and prayed to a unitary God, but again, I was left feeling empty and corrupted by a system of brainwashing, deceit, and subjugation. Disillusioned I set off on my own to follow the Great Way in isolation so I might assimilate to the natural world, shedding behind me all human doctrines and orders in my wake. In this manner I made true spiritual progress, and through it I came into knowledge of an ascended master of The Way, one ancient and enlightened beyond this world, yet in it. That is the way of the ascended masters, those who slip into such seclusion that they become like the subtle whisper of a spirit sung in the wind. One who is not, yet is. So I sought this master that I might gain his wisdom.”

  Gahre was entirely enthralled and urged him to go on. But the ascetic , seeing that the brew was ready, ladled it into a stoneware cup and thrust it firmly into Gahre's grasp. “Its taste is foul and bitter, but you are to drink all of it, this entire kettle, every drop. When your body tells you it can't bear to consume another drop, disregard it and force more down.”

  “Aye, Doctor,” Gahre agreed and sipped at the dark inky substance. He suppressed an immediate and overriding impulse to spit it out. Instead, he swallowed and sipped again with a visage of repulsion set upon his face. “Oh, that is truly awful,” he laughed.

  The ascetic laughed with him. “It will aid your body in restoring your internal organs and damaged nerves back to a ful
l and complete recovery.”

  “This ascended master you sought,” Gahre cued him back to the tale at hand, “you found him then?”

  Shaking his head, the ascetic sighed and went on. “Nay, young one, I could not endure the trials he set for those who would have audience with him. It was not unlike that terrible night when you arrived, dying and delirious from poison, facing your mortality.... but worse, and it went on and on. I simply could not endure; my soul lacked the very fiber to do so. When the ordeal was done however, I found I had been granted a precious gift that I still hold dear to this day: The Sight.”

  “You speak of the Third Eye that can see beyond our material plane?” Gahre knew enough about it having been raised in a community steeped in the tradition of the Dharma with many practitioners among his elders and peers alike.

  “Nay, young one, I speak of the Masters Eye, which sees all spaces of this very plane we dwell in, and without the limits of our localized vision. I have explored every corner of this world of ours. It is such a wondrous gift that I may travel and see the sights of distant lands from wherever I sit. It is nothing less than a divine power granted by a great master.”

  Gahre was utterly intrigued. He would normally discount such a fantastic claim, but Jokhon had all the markings of pious and truthful man. He tried to imagine it: to be able to look upon anyplace at any distance with only will of mind. And if a human mind has that capacity, what else could it do? He had so many questions for this man. He decided to deliver the most essential first.

  “So our world then, it is a sphere as the cartographers claim?”

  “It is undeniably that, a sphere of vibrant blue ocean and green land, white clouds and beige desert. It is like a shining glass orb, a magnificent gem held in the cosmos with no supports, turning and turning, west to east, changing day to night and back again.”

  “You were above the world, in the heavens?”

  “Early on, I delved into the heavens above our world and saw the sphere of Cearulei Azur, by which our sphere is dwarfed ten thousand by ten thousand times in scope. I then turned and eyed the PoleStar North, and I went there and into its searing white luminosity. It too had a world, but larger and cold and dark and void of life. From there among the broad and dyed curtains of the heavens, I ascended to the Four Kings, and they were grander still, many orders of size larger than our Cearulei. Up and onward there I passed starworld system after starworld system by the multitude through the pastel clouds of the cosmos, and then I rose above those clouds into a space beyond them.”

  “The cosmos extends beyond the painted clouds?”

  “Aye, I cannot even convey the scale of it to you; it is like looking into the very mind of God. I turned and looked back and saw our multitude of stars were within a painted cloud, the whole of which was not a speck of dust in the expanse that surrounded it. Stars by uncountable numbers in all directions and of all sizes, and I saw that they were part of a swirling city of stars, shaped as the markings on Fo, multitudes and multitudes beyond calculation. Where our world was but dust to the cloud, and that cloud a fleck of dust to our city of stars, so beyond that was an infinity of swirling star-cities forever in all directions. The scope of it was more than my mind could fathom, and I was set upon by madness. I traversed star to star and world to world, dead and empty worlds, ringed worlds, crystal worlds, worlds of beings crude like insects, and paradises flawless beyond portrayal. And in those paradises I saw heavenly beings and I could not bear their gaze, for they saw me as well, and I was unworthy of that place. My mind broke down and was flung into vertigo. I tried to find the path back, but I was lost in the eternity of the cosmos. I wandered in this state from star to star seeking the painted cloud that shrouded this world, and then I found one, and I scoured its multitudes for my dear Cearulei, but I could not find it. In time I came to see that I had entered an entirely different cloud and left it and tried to remember the form of the cloud that I had seen before. I wandered through many, mad and desperate, til I came back upon one in which I recognized the Four Kings within. And even then it took me days to find the twin star system of Cearulei and Rubeli, and this world and my body upon it. I had been gone nearly a year when I returned to my vessel, and I was on the brink of death with my muscles eaten away and my skin dry and taught like a mummy's. It took me months to recover my health, and lesson learned, I have kept my explorations terrestrially bound ever since. Partially enlightened, I may be, but there are heights upon heights I am still as yet unprepared for.”

  Gahre was flabbergasted. Wordlessly he stared at the man in wonder. Jokhon, for his part, was clearly drained from the telling of it. Gahre took it as cue not to press Jokhon further about the heavens, whose majesty had overwhelmed him and scarred his mind by sheer virtue of their scope, but terrestrial matters were still in play, and Gahre had plenty of simple geographical questions to pose.

  “So if the world is a sphere, that means then, were one to sail west on the Depthless Ocean, which is also therefore not an endless expanse as they teach us, if he stayed his course continually west for the entire span of it, he would land on some eastern outlaying shores of the impassible Sea of Sand in the east where all maps end?”

  Jokhon seemed suddenly anxious as one realizing he'd said too much.

  “The Law forbids me from answering you. Forbidden Knowledge,” he said. “I find it a travesty that one with your great inborn potential has not already been recruited into The Order and taught these things.”

  Jokhon had also answered the question by not answering it. Gahre now knew there were realms between the Sea of Sand and the western reach of the Depthless Ocean.

  “It's just that you are the first to ever inquire. I should have taken more care in my words,” the ascetic explained.

  “You mean you should have lied to me?”

  The ascetic grinned awkwardly. “If you could see these realms you would understand why their existence is hidden from us. Their ways are drastically different from ours and not conducive to nurturing the rich and varied cultures we have here in the Pangea. A man such as you, for example, could never come to be there.”

  “The Pangea? That is what our realms are called then, rather than simply “The World?””

  He sighed. “Yes, and hidden beyond the edges of the map is another subcontinent of our world, known as Arath, composed itself of many nations. But I tell you, bright one, if you want to know wisdom I can teach you the methods of internal alchemy and meditation. Although The Sight was granted me by an ascended master, I also believe it be possible that one may cultivate it on his own.”

  “You would be my master then?”

  “Nay, young one. You are too bright, and I never knew a soul as strong as yours was in the world. The Dharmaists would say that you were not ascended from the lower realms, but rather a divine entity that has tired of heaven and returned to the world for the sake of compassion, at the grave risk of corrupting of his eternal soul and becoming once again lost in the vicious cycles of Samsara.”

  Gahre was dubious of that statement. Truly he was a truthseeker, but he was no divine being. Would an angel be fool enough to make himself so intoxicated that he nearly get himself killed in the wilderness? No. It was absolute human folly of the lowest variety.

  “I do not think, wise one, that I could bear to sit in stillness as you do. I have an active mind, not an empty one. And my meditation is the straining of my legs and my boot against the terra firma.”

  “Who is to say that is not a path in itself?”

  “Vast is your mind, I have no doubt. But vast too is the universe around us. If my path coincides with my nature, I cannot sit here and journey in stillness. Just as my mind contemplates the mysteries of the world, so I shall take the world as my mind and explore it thusly. The straining of my legs and the hunger of my belly will be my meditation. I shall travel east and find these Forbidden Lands. And once I have, I will return to this place, and we shall compare our journeys!”

  “Indee
d, Gahre of Tulan, Son of Danu, I will await your return with great anticipation. I believe you followed a Way that led you here, and now it seems you know quite precisely where you'll be going next. I warn you though, both routes are impassible. No one has ever made either journey; not by sea in the west, nor by land in the east.”

  “I will find a way, friend. I will see this land of Arath and its wonders with my own eyes, I vow it! I'm nothing of a seaman but I have yet to meet any terrain my two feet could not conquer.”

  On that occasion, he’d been 19, and after an evening of profound discourse with the wise man and another long and regenerative sleep, he returned to Tulan after two weeks of absence, in good health and with renewed vigor and absolute purpose. He had just one piece of unfinished business to attend to before he set off for Arath: The Spring Conference.

  Returning to the village after an expedition was usually a great joy. He would relay his tales to the other younger men, who listened in awe and admiration. The same society that had seemed so restrictive would become a delight to engage in for a time. He lived every moment vitally and ethically, and developed a bold yet earnest charm that earned him a place of deep endearment in the heart of every resident of Tulan -if not always their approval. He would gorge himself on chicken and grains and cheese until his belly fattened, and when he felt the entanglements of civilization wrapping around him, he would disappear again.

  But this time was different. This time, with the key to Forbidden Knowledge in his hand, he slipped into Tulan surreptitiously in the dead of night, quiet and contemplative, plotting deception against The Order.