Nirvana and/or the Predicament

The Abstract:

Does true love only exist in response to the suffering of life, to the absurdities of society? It’s degradations? To reach out in compassion toward another being and stay at their side in the face of it all?

And yet, the fundamental loneliness of our dilemma is ever present, gnawing at its legitimacy.

You could say I was a novice at the time. At least in the place I’m referring to. To explain what it’s like there to an outsider, that would be a difficult task. To get a sense of where I was, the first important thing, at least from your standpoint, is to entertain the perspective that everything you see isn’t real. In fact, what you sense and what you experience in your daily life, that has no actual bearing on reality. It’s just an interface.

So when I describe this place, don’t think of it as any more or less real than the reality you find yourself in every day. In that sense, it’s no different.

In that place, there are no corporeal bodies, just pure thought. The body has been shed, and believe me when I tell you there’s no missing it when it’s gone. Only when it’s gone does one realize how primitive they are. Limiting and fragile. Grotesque.

Although we existed in thought, there were distinct others. We interacted with them from time to time, but mostly we were solitary. It’s a sort of void, yet we existed in that void. This place is present in your reality, too, it’s just obscured, so the vast majority don’t sense it.

In this world of thought, time flows differently than what you’re used to. Things are seen and unseen. But it is possible to make connections. I made several over the course of my time there. I’m here to tell you about the most important one. Who it was with, well, there’s no real use for names there, we don’t use them. For the purposes of this narrative, we’ll call her Y. I’ll be X to her Y, but I won’t refer to myself as X. I’m just telling you this so you understand my thinking process on the matter.

Y was a thing of dreams. You’d have the wrong idea on us if you thought we were beyond all that. Closer, perhaps, but no, we weren’t yet set free of it. We dwelt in thought, bonded in thought. I saw visions of the past: the past in which Y had intersected with; the beings she inhabited, the others who crossed her varied paths.

And as I was about to find out, if you go back far enough, most of us have crossed paths before, at least in the confines of one form or another. After we got to know each other, that’s when Y opened a portal: she showed me a vision of our mutual past.                                                                                 

I was reluctant to follow her down this path at first. I was worried what I might find. But there’s no use in keeping things hidden for long, not here. So I went for it; I let it happen. Things were blurred at first, difficult to decipher, mere fragments.

Y had long flowing hair. She sat on the edge of a rock looking out towards a bright and sunny harbor. There was a tree above us. The speckled light shone down between its leaves.

Then, too, we existed in a world of connected thoughts. Two physical brains with an increased capacity for communication, nothing more. There was no harmony between them, not like how it was in the void. It was common at the time, apparently. Some technological wonder in a world that melded the mechanical and biological. How I had forgotten, I didn’t understand.

In the vision, I communed with Y. We were a couple. We exchanged thoughts about frivolous things, none of it had much meaning to me now. But the images she opened still sear: strands of her hair flowing towards me in the breeze; a broad smile as she turned her face towards me, away from that gentle harbor.

It was happiness.

But as quickly as it appeared, she then drew me towards a new scene. That bright day next to the sea quickly fading into darkness, limitations. A cramped room. She was standing there with her head bowed. And although there were others around her, she was alone. They were near her, but none seemed to be with her. In fact, it was as if nobody else could even see her.

As I looked closer, I saw that her form, at least, was nearly the same as before. Her striking features held two doe-like eyes that sat closed as her head tilted downward. Her long hair was tied up in a bun. Along with her dress, it indicated that she was at some sort of formal event. It was a somber occasion, but its purpose was unclear to me.

She was upset. Dangerous feelings flooded her thoughts. There was no use for words; there was no need. I saw and felt everything she was feeling, even if I wasn’t nearby. Where my physical body was at the time, I couldn’t tell. But I was consumed by her feelings. It was suffocating. As the vision steered my senses into this past form of flesh and tactile, I knew that we were no longer together. I knew things had become damaged between us, perhaps irreparably.

Swept back from the vison, we parted as the essence of our beings – this thing you might call mind – fell from its mutual embrace. Utterly confused, I sat alone with my thoughts. How could I have forgotten this being? We shared this past and yet there was nothing in me which indicated as much. We might as well have been perfect strangers before our meetings in this void, this realm of pure thought.  

I stayed there for some time, probably much longer than I had realized, searching my unconscious for the missing pieces.

Then I started hitting something. Something that lay beyond a vast shadow. Y was with me. We sat next to each other on a small bed. I reached out to her but was met with the immediate realization that our thoughts were no longer connected.

She looked different somehow. Instinctively I knew it was her, but physically she was…different. There was no questioning it. Her dark hair went down to her shoulders. Her eyes, now almond shaped, were still her most defining feature. They were just as arresting, but no longer quite as round. She wore a long nightgown printed with small images of the moon and stars.

Without the ability to commune, she spoke.

“And when you’re through, what’s next? When are you coming home?”

I responded that I didn’t know. I left. I had intended to return, I realized, but at the time I couldn’t see beyond my own two feet. There was deep affection, but it was surrounded by fog. I couldn’t see too far away. In the distance, there was something golden. I followed it.

From that moment, I knew we had exchanged our last words together. From that point, I knew I had made a mistake. I sped forward, looking up just in time to see a pair of headlights rushing toward me. And as you can probably already guess, by that time it was too late to do anything about it.

In those final seconds, I sat there staring at the brightness as it sped toward me. I didn’t look away.

Back in the void, I now knew what I had previously kept hidden. I was bound to remember at some point. But as to why I had kept leaving her, that I couldn’t quite figure out. The Abstract came shortly after.

Even though I’ve remembered this much, the ground under me seems no less sturdy. Upon making the transition, I’m all but positive that I’ll forget everything I’ve accumulated in my journey so far. It will all likely be lost. As it stands, I still don’t see everything regardless, that much I know. I’m unsure if I’m ready. Perhaps there will be a way to jog my memory, but for now there’s nothing I can do. I’ll just have to go for it.

Clearing my thoughts of these concerns, I look out on the scene, ready to jump back down into a half-remembered world

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