Lab C: Chapter 13 - A wise old monk once said...

“The void. To be nothing. Unperceived. To be with out form and to chose your form as it is needed. When you surrender all desire, all preference for how things are, how they are perceived, how you are perceived, you may then act as you please, so long as you are able to stay without preference at the outcomes which follow. This… this is the meaning of life.” A wise monk once said, atop a peak where one could see the curvature of Earth.

The nerdy man who stood before him, with his cut up and battered body, his pack torn from weeks of travel, his eyes gaunt and clothes loose, took this in for a second then asked…

“But how will I decide what to eat?”

“….” said the monk.

“If I have no preference, but I have the choice of Chinese, Thai, Mexican, Mcdonalds, whatever, if I have no preference, how can I choose one?”

“When you are without preference, what is meant for you will come.”

“But if I am without preference, why would I even eat? I don’t prefer to be fed, and I don’t prefer to be hungry. I just am.”

“When the body is in need, what is necessary for it, will come.”

“But why would I eat then? To be without preference is to not be concerned if you die or if you live. If I have no preference to live or die, why would I ever even eat?”

“If it is your time. It is your time.”

“But I hiked here…” the nerdy man looks down the miles long arete that lead to this picturesque plateau just big enough for the monk to sit and the man to stand before him, “for months. If I hadn’t preferred to live an enlightened life, I never would have come up here.”

“And this path you chose. The question is… what will you do now?”

The nerdy man blinks, takes in the view, so vast and encompassing, so impressive and near wholly unseen by man, and smiles. The smile then fades. “I guess I’ll head home.”

He waves to the monk, and the monk waves back. He smiles, closes his eyes and reenters the meditation he had begun when he reached this peak. He had meditated through the cycles and no longer knew how long he had been here.

When he was hungry, a bug would crawl by and he would eat it. When thirst threatened to end his life, rain or a juicy bug would appear. When it was cold, he accepted it and ignored the blackened toes and fingers. When it was hot… well it never really got hot up here so perhaps he would never know.

However, with that nerdy man, the monk knew, in his soul a deep truth and connection to reality so profound. He had become void. He had become one with space and time. In this moment of absolute truth and connection, he became incorporeal and slipped into the earth, leaving his robes behind.

This did not phase him, phasing through the world. Aside from the nothingness he could see, for incorporeal eyes can not be hit by light, he “saw” truth, energy, endless expanse of energy. Had he been able to see light, he would have seen when he blipped through a cave a fully lit cave where an alien smoking a cigarette was working on the underside of his UFO.

The alien certainly saw him, and chose to ignore it.

His arms and legs spread, in total relaxation and surrender, began to stretch slowly as his form succumbed to the relaxation and the surrender.

Deeper and deeper into the Earth’s core he fell, until slowly, the cool embrace of Earth began to warm. The beauty and intensity of our origin is so fundamental and engrained in us, that it pierced his state. His naked body began to feel the excitement of Mother Earth’s core energy and his smile grew. He couldn’t stop himself, he cackled. He cackled so hard that he didn’t want to stop. And the moment he didn’t want to stop… he came back into form.