The Speakable

It involved a long process of taking that part that could not speak, for it lay in the background of man’s mind, and putting it out to the forefront.

“But remember”, said the teacher, “If this is done and as a consequence your voice is restored to you, there is a certain price you must pay, for that part of you which in most men is hidden and so preserved, albeit in a an unused and so partially broken way, will in you be exposed. Exposed to the brutality of men and women who live by guarding themselves.”

“So though your voice will be restored and your words will come from the very core of your being, this being of yours will e subject to the splintering affects of a thousand guarded eyes who will try once again to break this newly formed voice.”

“If you can resist this onslaught without seeming to resist it; If you can speak through a silence, without seeming to disturb it; Walk through boundaries without seeming to speak them. If you can speak words almost forgotten by most, without drawing attention to the absence surrounding; if you can fill a space as though a space had never been there before; meet a sound from within a s a stranger meets another without suspicion or expectation then perhaps you will succeed. But if not, your very being will be bent and pummelled in the first instance of its occurrence. For you must exist without seeming to exist. Only then will your path be clear.”

With this the teacher took her leave. And the man went his own way. He looked out before him and the road was clear and wonderful. To either side of the road were trees, the wind shaking over them effortlessly. Above the sky was vast. The Man felt steady on his feet. He let his mind unroll ahead of him until he was unaware of his body and seemed to blend with the vastness surrounding.

Then somewhere up ahead he saw a speck. As the speck grew he saw a speck within a speck. This speck within a speck was the pupil of the eye of a man getting ever larger and larger. It looked directly at him seeming to pull him towards it. He felt compelled by it as never before. The world surrounding seemed to shrink into this small black spot and finally to disappear. Then it was that he was aware only of himself somehow growing in magnitude even as he shrunk into the depths of this blankness. As he and the man approached one another he smiled. It was a smile from within and it grew out of him spontaneously.

At this very moment the other man turned his head sharply to one side. With this gesture the man felt the first strike of the world to which the teacher had warned him of. He felt overcome with a dizziness as if he were falling off the side of the world. With his eyes staring wide and now empty he saw nothing. Neither of himself nor of the world surrounding. Then he blinked and the stranger was gone.

On he walked this time with his head hung a little down, keeping trace of himself by watching the movement of the stumbling feet below him much as a confused mind delves into unattached notes for assistance.

Now, without directly looking he became aware of another person approaching. He glanced up, checking on the correctness of his sensibility. Then looked down again. His awareness centred on the now growing onslaught of footsteps coming from the opposite direction. He too increased his pace wishing to pass the eruption as quickly as possible. As the footsteps grew louder and louder, almost deafeningly so, he felt sweat breaking out all over his body. He looked up and caught what he thought must be the reflection of himself; a look of utter fear and incomprehension. Then as his head swung down once again he realised that this in fact was the face of the man he was passing.

Back in the quiet of the road, the road continued. At last he began to drift and drifting he thought. He drifted into the sounds that seemed to surround and indeed define the utter emptiness of the road. There was the sound of the leaves. Or was it the sound of the wind? Could one take these things apart and still e aware of each?

Gradually he felt himself lulled by the sounds. By the thoughts that these sounds gave rise to. By the intense awareness of sound that these thoughts provoked. His progress became a part of this progress. Yet all the time he was not aware of progress for he neither felt himself walking into the distance nor the distance as entering towards him from afar. Each moment gave rise to a different angle of thought and his body to a different pattern or shape and yet these shapes manifested themselves and disappeared without interruption and so the man never felt the fatigue of heaviness.

From then on the man passed many people and the words that he spoke to them were wide and far-reaching. As were the words that he received from them. What was striking about these encounters was that all conversations ended with the shared memory of that first encounter with the teacher, and the promise she had made to them.