The two "teachers" I am presenting today are actually characters from novels that I read when I was in my early 20s. I refer to them as "teachers" because their entrance into my life, into my active consciousness, fueled new dreams and expanded imaginings of amazing life paths that, I felt, were available for me and for all humans. I felt imbued with the spirit of these two characters. I felt as if wanted to try to behave, to think and act, as they did, that being like them was a viable and desirable goal for me, personally. Siddhartha and Michael Valentine Smith may be fictional characters born of the imaginations of ordinary men, but these imaginary figures have been as familiar and inspiring to me as most of my family and friends!
Siddhartha is here referencing the protagonist of German writer, Hermann Hesse, from his 1904 novel of the same name. I had heard of Siddhartha my first week in college but had never had the novel fall into my hands until I was on my foreign study in Strasbourg, France, during my junior year of college. Siddhartha was the gateway to my devouring of all of Hesse's books (at least, those available in English translation in 1978) as well as those of his contemporary, Thomas Mann.
There are very few fictitious book characters that speak to me as deeply and profoundly as that of Hesse's Siddhartha. The novel was written by a young Hesse as a way of grappling with the humanness of the man who became known as the Buddha. Guatama Siddhartha was an historical figure who was born into an upper class family (either India's Brahmin or priest caste or a politically powerful family) in the fifth Century BCE. As the story goes, Siddhartha rejected his family and caste position in order to seek more just and equal status as a human. He eventually achieved "enlightenment," a state of Self annihilation or Self reunification with All That Is and started preaching and teaching. His teachings attracted enough followers to start a religion that we call Buddhism. In Hesse's version of the Buddha's life, Siddhartha achieved enlightenment while sitting on the river bank, listening to the primordial sounds coming from Nature, from the river, from within his Self.
My own attraction to sitting in stillness alongside a river, stream or babbling brook was at its peak during this period of my life--my twenties. I even 'restored' the spelling of a favorite word at that time to reflect Siddartha's transcendent realization that within the voice of the river could be heard all sounds, all voices of life, and especially of those of humanity. Similar to the mythological Tower of Babel in which egos and arrogance, strife and discord became so disruptive and possessive that Old Testament God had to "curse" all workers on the project each with their own 'tongue' or language in order to cause enough confusion and to get them to disband and give up on their project. Thus, to me, a river or stream always "babels" instead of just babbling.
Like me (and all humans consciously traveling along a spiritual path), Siddhartha had to go through stages in life in order to be able to master certain skills upon which he could build and in order to more fully appreciate the gifts and information available to him in everyday, every moment consciousness. The achievement of mastery of using the human form as a conduit for open flow of spiritual energy came as a result of full conscious investiture into whatever endeavor or 'project' he decided to choose. Also exemplary is the fact that Siddhartha consciously chose each endeavor for very specific reasons and goals he hoped to attain--which is the opposite of so many humans now sleep walking the planet in this age of industrial, technological automation. Siddhartha gave me an example of a human who was making all of his choices in full consciousness--and thus he had no regret. He lived according to principles of his choosing. Whether he adapted or adopted them from someone or somewhere else, he was always aware that he was choosing this, that his choices--and their consequences--were his and his alone. Would that we could all be so present and willful.
There have been many riverbanks in my life--some real, some imagined. All have proved calming and inspiring. One might say that my own adventures into writing fiction started along rivers and streams--as expressed in a poem I was inspired to put to paper in 1985 that I still consider to be my only "perfect" wordsmithing (though years have passed during which I wonder if the couplet is original--whether or not I plucked it out of my subconscious after having heard or read it years before):
Drawn water's edge by listening ears,
I calm my thoughts and still my fears.
Michael Valentine Smith is another character from a piece of fiction; he's the protagonist from Robert Heinlein's 1961 science fiction novel, Stranger in a Strange Land. One of my revered messianic characters of which I have spoken in previous podcasts, Michael is given his 'different' powers via the storyline that he was born of human parents from a failed attempt to colonize Mars. The story unveils itself from the moment Michael is returned to Earth as a twenty-something young man through his unwitting rise to power, his struggle to remain free and independent and on to his martyr death and afterlife. Michael is another character whose story revolves around or centers on water, which is a great coincidence (which, of course, there is no such thing) since my own life as the fictional character Drew Fisher has been quite aguacentric.
Through Michael Valentine Smith Robert Heinlein unleashed to the world a new "Martian" vocabulary and many new, Christ-like customs upon his readers. The verb "grok," which is meant to imply a very deep, full almost cellular understanding of something, is often seen or heard even among modern day writers and speakers. And the unusual and wonderful concepts of "sharing water," "water brothers," and the literal eating of a loved one's dead corpse as a way to show great love, honor and respect, were all introduced to us with their new sacred meanings by Heinlein in ASIASL.
I was one of many who adopted not only some of the language, references, and deeply reverent concepts from ASIASL, but more, the character of Michael Valentine Smith helped inspire utopian/eutopian/intentional community ideas, yearnings and writings in me. Many themes in my writings, including my novels, Adventures in Drewtopia, The Mysterious Life of Antonin Maniqui, grew out of the inspiration of Michael Valentine Smith. Several "free love" experiments in my personal life also occurred thanks to the spirit imbued in me from the example of MVS.
The Michael character helped validate in my innocent naïveté, my openness to love for every person in my presence in every moment, my belief that every person on the planet was worthy of my love, as well as a temporary belief that sexual intimacy was the highest celebration of one's expression of love.
No comments:
Post a Comment