The Library

Fifth Scene

The purpose of the serenity path finally made itself clear a couple of mornings later when Gwen woke up very early to find No. 1 meditating at its end, perfectly at peace.

One would have assumed he was watching the sunrise, but a closer look revealed he was gazing way farther than that, through the sunrise into another reality, shielded from perception by the limitations of our senses.

An even closer look revealed he wasn't even there.

His animating force was still occupying his body, breathing his lungs and beating his heart, but his consciousness was not there, that which made him who he was, the unique personality impossible to mistake for another.

Gwen daren't bother him in that state, which, even from the perspective of a detached bystander, looked like a deeply intimate experience.

She just sat on a boulder, a short distance from him, watching him blend into the surroundings with the grace of a tree, or a cloud formation, breathing with the morning breeze roused by the first rays of light warming up the rocky mesa.

"I appreciate your discretion," he whispered, as if from a dream, "but I need to let you know I've been aware of your presence the entire time."

He opened his eyes wide and all his spirit rushed back into its shell, bringing him to full attention.

"You can't sleep?"

"Do you always wake up so early?"

"I usually meditate before dawn, yes."

"Isn't it uncomfortably cold?" Gwen shivered in the desert night air, which chilled her to the bone, even now, when the sunrise had started to warm up the stones.

"Cold," he said, like he didn't understand the concept. "Cold is just a message your body sends to your brain." He looked at her and waved his hand. "Don't worry, I will not give you the world as an illusion speech. In fact, I'm not entirely sure that is true."

"What do you mean?"

"I don't believe either consciousness or matter define existence, I think they're two states of the same Prima Materia, like water and ice. Consciousness dreams reality into being, not as an illusion, but as solid matter, as things you can see and touch, as distances that are near or far. Consciousness coagulates energy into matter, which takes the form of the dream it's been poured in."

"Does that mean I dreamed of getting lost?"

"Do you feel lost?"

"I am lost."

"That's not what I asked."

"Let's just say ending up here was not part of this year's plan."

"Most of the really important experiences usually aren't," he smiled. "We're all married to our perception of reality, but the real real, if there is such a thing, is as different from our perception of it as a word is from the concept it stands for."

"You may say that this representation of reality, this seeing and touching and distance, is also an illusion, an expression of consciousness. Maybe, but then you'd have to admit that upon the hypothetical extinction of humanity, the universe, reality itself, would cease to exist. You might as well adopt the young earth theory while you're at it."

"I think it an insane form of hubris to presume oneself to be that which dreamed reality into being," Gwen rolled her eyes.

"So, then, if the universe was before us and will be long after we're gone, whose consciousness dreamt it into being?"

"Who says we're the only conscious entities in the universe?"

"This argument applies to all conscious entities, specifically, all self-aware entities whose existence started at some point."