The Nomadic Alternative – Page 253

not to surrender to the destructive forces that loom on all sides.

Again the jaws of death gape for him. Again he treads the path narrow as a razor. This is the second 'dark night' experience of the mystics or Beowulf's fight with the scaly Worm.

Then tired and exhausted, he drags himself along till he arrives at the seventh initiation. This is Eden, the bright place of enlightenment, in the words of the Katha Upanishad the "End of the Path" when "man becomes free from the jaws of death". The work of the 'soul' is done. The biological clock has unwound itself. The adrenalines, histamines and other glandular secretions have all performed their functions on time. Their subject has lived his myths on time and has recovered the Peaceable Kingdom, where even a hungry lion is a friend. Extinction of the body is of no further interest to him or to anybody.

The End of the Path is synonymous with the irradiated condition that goes under any number of names - Nirvana, Consciousness of the Atman, the Kingdom of Heaven, Fana, Mind-Wheel, Samadhi, even Mind-blown. I find it impossible to comment on any moral significance it may have. But we do know this. As life spirals to its close, a dying man feels himself borne up by a benificent presence and spirals upwards to a point of light. Two texts will illustrate this, one from the Apocalypse, the other from the Katha Upanishad - "The Kingdom of Heaven departed as a scroll when it is furled up." and

"The dying man sees Heaven before him as a turning wheel. Upwards he flies towards it. Through the Centre he goes." What if anything, lies beyond the Centre is a matter for theologians. I cannot presume to discuss it.