Ivan Yefremov - Thais of Athens

Thais, burning with curiosity, made the elder priest promise her a demonstration of the terrible ritual.

Much in the Indians’ stories remained unclear to Thais and Lysippus. The enormous extent of time, tracked by them from the creation of the world, went entirely against the calculations of the Egyptian, Finikian, Hebrew and Pythagorean scholars. The Hebrews had the shortest count of only six thousand years. According to the

Indian data, the first real people appeared on Earth eighteen million, six hundred, sixteen thousand, five hundred and sixteen years ago. With the same frightening precision, the Indians had calculated the length of the dark and menacing period of troubles in the history of mankind, which started after the great battle in India two thousand, seven hundred, seventy years prior, when the best of people perished. This era or, as they called it, Kali-Yuga, was to last another four hundred, twenty-nine thousand years.

“Other scholars believe it to be much shorter,” the tall Indian said. “Only a bit over five thousand years.”

Lysippus and Thais exchanged glances. Such enormous discrepancy contradicted the precision of the enormous numbers. Noting the Helenians’ confusion, the Indians continued to tell them about the precise calculations developed by their mathematicians. In the book of “solar science”, the time was segmented in a way with which the Helenians were not familiar. One hour equaled twenty-four Helenian minutes, and one minute or vikala was twenty-four seconds. The time was further fragmented by a factor of sixty, all the way down to a kashta: an unimaginably brief moment of one three hundred millionth of a second.

To Lysippus’ question, what was the use in numbers that could be neither measured nor imagined, the Indian replied that the human mind had two stages of consciousness. At the higher stage, called buddhi, a person was capable of comprehending such small measures and understanding the structure of the world made up of the smallest particles and central forces that were eternal and undefeatably strong, despite their being mere points of energy.

The Helenians learned about the great physician Jivak, who lived three hundred years before and possessed a stone that could show a body’s internal organs. They also learned of another healer who protected people from smallpox by making a small scratch and rubbing into it some blood from a person who had survived the disease.

“Then why don’t physicians use this method today?” Thais exclaimed. “You speak of it as something half-forgotten.”

The elder priest gazed at her silently while the younger cried out with indignation. “You must not say such things, beautiful initiated one! All this and many other things constitute a mystery locked in ancient books. If it is forgotten, then such is the will of gods and Karma. When we, the priests of the highest caste, discover that a person of a lower caste has overheard the reading of the sacred books, we pour molten lead into his ears.”

“Then how do you carry out the distribution of the knowledge?” Thais asked acidly. “You have only just spoken of the perils of ignorance.”

“We care not about the distribution, but about preservation of the knowledge among those who are meant to possess it,” the tall priest replied.

“Among one caste? And what of the others? Are they to be kept ignorant?”

“Yes. To fulfill their destiny. If they do it well they will be born into a higher caste in their next life.”

“Knowledge preserved by a small group will invariably grow weaker and become forgotten,” Lysippus interrupted. “Closed circles that are castes are only good for breeding animals, not people. The Spartans tried creating a breed of warriors, and even succeeded at it. But all things in life change faster than people can anticipate. The life of war put the Lacedemonians at the brink of extinction.”

“We have not one, but many castes, as is necessary for human existence,” the Indian objected.

“Still, I find the Helenian approach toward people more consistent. In your sacred books and philosophic writings, you place humans at the same level as gods; however, in reality you breed them like livestock and keep them ignorant,” Lysippus said firmly.

“Do Helenians not acknowledge the nobility of one’s origins?” the elder priest asked, frowning.

“They do. But there is one basic difference. We believe that a nobleman can be born anywhere and that he deserves any knowledge, art and skill he wishes to learn and use. If he finds an equally good mate, the noble line of their descendants would be equally welcome in an Athenian palace as they would be in a house of a Chalhidian farmer. Good and bad can originate anywhere. It is common to believe that particularly outstanding individuals are born of gods and goddesses.”

“But you have slaves whom you do not consider human, and humiliate to the level of animals,” the Indian exclaimed.

Thais wanted to object, but Lysippus stopped her by gently squeezing her hand. He rose and left the Athenian alone with the Indians, then followed the familiar path to his room. He returned with a large chest made of purple amaranth wood with ornate golden corners. Having placed it carefully on the octagonal table, the sculptor opened the clasp. He revealed a strange mechanism: a combination of gears and levers of various sizes. Silver rings were marked with letters and symbols.

The Indians leaned over the chest, obviously interested.

“A follower of Pythagoreans, Heraclitus of Pont, who was close to Aristotle, discovered that the globe of Gaea revolves around itself, akin to a top, and that its axis is tipped with respect to the plane traveled by the Sun and its planets. This mechanism was built to calculate the movement of planets, without which navigation and prediction of the future could not exist. Here is someone’s mind that established itself one time, having designed this mechanism, to be followed by the other’s hands and the tables inscribed on the cover. People who use it are free from long calculations and have time for higher pursuits.”

The stunned priests grew quiet. Lysippus took advantage of their dismay and said, “We Helenians, instead of punishing the seekers of knowledge with molten lead, open wide the porticos and gardens of our academies and schools of philosophy. We are catching up with you who started comprehending the world several thousands of years earlier.”

“That is because there are so few of you and you are forced to preserve your students in order to ensure the passage of the torch of knowledge. But there are so many of us. If we shout out our knowledge in a town square it will be instantly distorted by the ignorant and turned against true scholars. In Kriashakhty and Kundalini we have discovered secrets of personal strength and we carefully guard the technique of its learning and usage. It would cause great trouble if this knowledge were to end up with a person of imperfect Karma.”

This is when Thais discovered the law of Karma, or retribution. Karma made Nemesis, daughter of the Night and the Helenian goddess of fair punishment, look naïve, small and weak.

In the colossal cosmic mechanism, whose workings were at the basis of the world, all things — gods, people and animals — were subject to Karma. They must all live out their errors, imperfections and particularly their crimes in a series of incarnations, their fate growing better or worse depending on their personal and social behavior. Lying and deceit, especially captured in books, constituted terrible crimes because they resulted in harmful consequences for many people and could take thousands of years to eliminate. Destruction of beauty was also considered to be one of the worst crimes. When someone forbade something to someone else, he took upon himself the Karma of his subject, whatever it might be.