Oliver Benjamin
texture of the leaves on a vine and it seemed as if I could feel that
texture without touching it. Smells seemed pronounced. I had a
strange sensation that I was among friends. Like a warm blanket or a
pool of cool water, a deep silence descended all around me. A rush
came to my face and the muscles in my back unwound themselves. I
experienced the most glorious, ecstatic breath I had ever taken in my
life.
My meditation grew deeper. Within minutes, a rapturous flush
tingled in my spine that felt exactly like the ecstasy trip I had in
Thailand. It was as if I had been let in on a big secret: that existence
is joyous only when you leave it alone. I had merely touched the tip
of this iceberg, but it was enough—more than enough to convince me
that I needed to find out more.
Something that I had read in Haridas’ Ayn Rand book occurred
to me later, that measurements exist to amplify the scope of man’s
awareness beyond what he can perceive with his own senses. While
one can imagine the length of a foot, and by establishing the
relationship of feet to miles, and miles to light-years, he can begin to
fathom galactic distances, perhaps the key to understanding the
infinite wasn’t to directly experience it, but to grasp the connection.
You can see God in a blade of grass or a rose petal if you can just start
to see the link, the continuum of measurement.
And maybe that’s what meaning was, I thought—the
connections between things. Between ideas and friends and
experiences and lovers. Meaning could change just as relationships
did. But the truly profound ones never changed. The connection
between mankind and his planet, for instance, or those between true
lovers. Meaning was the network of invisible links that held the
universe, and our fragile hearts, together. Meaning was not in any
one thing. It was not in me. Meaning was in me and you. And in me
and you and the world. And in me and you eating curried vegetables.
Coming out of my meditation, I found myself laughing and realized
that my laughter was music, and once I stopped, that the silence was
music as well.
When I returned to Haridas’ hut he was outside working in his
garden. I slowly and with conscious steps approached him, and my
presence made him turn around. At first he merely smiled at me in
greeting, but something in my eyes drew his attention. He dropped
the spade he was holding and carefully moved closer to me so that he
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