Edward Aubyn - On the Edge

Kenneth looked at the effect Adam had created. Life was complicated. Sometimes Adam could shift the whole room by invoking the perspective of an absolute truth, but he was such an unreliable witness to that truth. His slash-and-burn, rave-and-squabble progress filled the air with the smoky perfume of burning bridges. But then, Kenneth pushed his logic forward, he, Kenneth, was such an unreliable witness of Adam’s unreliability. And who was the reliable witness of his judgement of Adam? What was the value of these judgements we all spent our time formulating so carefully? It was like one raindrop trying to estimate the position of another raindrop as they fell together through space.

‘Last year I came to a moment when everything was falling completely apart,’ Adam resumed. ‘We were being persecuted and divided and had no sex for nine months. It was a horrible, horrific story. I had told the truth about my guru and I had the demonic force of all the disciples against me. I thought we’d be murdered, and then a voice said, “Even if you die, the fact that you are trying to bear witness to the truth of life will mean that in invisible occult ways anybody who stands for truth will be fed by you, even if you’re killed, even if people believe the worst of you, it doesn’t matter, stand for life anyway. Get annihilated…”’

Get annihilated? Is this still ‘the voice’? Kenneth wondered.

‘“… that standing, even if you’re defeated, puts you in the eternal order, not in the order of the world.”’

Oh, so standing is good, thought Kenneth, who was getting hungry. It’s just standing on one leg which is bullshit. Standing and kneeling are good. He’ll be walking next; a proud moment. And what about that ‘eternal order’, sounds like an ‘elsewhere’, an ‘otherwhere’? Is this a man looking at life ‘without consolation’? Kenneth’s blood sugar plummeted.

‘Christ was, after all, in wordly terms, defeated…’

‘Christ, now he thinks he’s Christ,’ muttered Kenneth.

Brooke smiled at him enquiringly. Kenneth smiled back obediently.

‘… defeated in this dimension, but the act of standing for what he believed really transformed our vision of life.

‘There’s an astonishing new discovery,’ Adam continued excitedly, ‘that, in Aramaic, Christ is punning with the last words he spoke on the Cross. They could mean, as they’re traditionally translated, “My Lord, my Lord, why hast thou forsaken me?” But the very word which means “forsaken” in Aramaic could mean, wait for it, “My Lord, my Lord, why hast thou glorified me?” The pun gives us the clue to the whole inner nature of the Crucifixion. The ultimate dignity comes from the total embrace of that abandonment, that’s the paradox.

‘Real mystic alchemy is not a game, because you’re dealing with the fundamental powers of the universe. It’s very, very difficult, because what’s trying to be born between two people on that path isn’t Shams and Rumi, but Shrumi or Rams. That’s why Rumi often signs the poetry Shams, because he genuinely didn’t know, he’d crossed over, they’d done it, Rumi was transformed by Shams and Shams was transformed by Rumi, and Shrams wrote the poetry.’

‘Adam?’ asked a middle-aged woman in a grey tracksuit and thick white socks. ‘Is Yves your Shams?’

‘Yes,’ said Adam calmly.

Shall we call him Adamy or Yvam? Kenneth pondered. Or perhaps Jesus Shramdric? Or Mother Jesus Yvansham? Or The Gloriously Forsaken Mother Jesus Ramashramydam? Weak with hunger, Kenneth started to laugh silently but uncontrollably.

‘This is a new model,’ Adam resumed. ‘The tragedy of the guru disciple thing is that the guru isn’t implicated, whereas in this relationship both go to another stage of love and discover the non-duality which occurs when both beings are fused. And that’s what Shrumi is communicating.’

Kenneth had a coughing fit and had to leave the room.

‘The only comparable relationship is a young child,’ Adam confessed. ‘I mean, when you’re a mother and that child is in pain, all the therapists in the world can tell you to be detached but you can’t sleep: the suffering comes from this immense identification with the other person. You’re not in any kind of theatre in that love, you’re not on any kind of stage, you’re not posing, you’re deprived of all the normal games by which people control each other and control themselves.

‘Really, what goes on is that Shams says, “You fool, don’t you understand what’s at stake? Stop it.” And Rumi has a nervous breakdown which is exactly what he needs, because he has to have that breakdown to get to the next stage. And Shams then leaves because Rumi has to be broken by that leaving. This would look to a normal San Francisco therapist like madness. They have all sorts of fancy names like co-dependency and sado-masochism. They wouldn’t be anywhere near what was going on in the relationship, because what’s actually going on is atomic fusion, nuclear fusion.’

‘Do we have to have a nervous breakdown too?’ asked the woman in the grey tracksuit.

‘No, no, no. Bless you. You may be lucky enough to have a harmonious relationship, and that may be a karmic gift.’

‘Add children to this dynamic, Adam, and it’s totally different. You can’t afford to do this stuff if you have children. These two guys didn’t have to deal with children.’

‘Of course they didn’t, but they had to deal with homophobia. Try homophobia, darling.’

‘Why do you think the disciples were so vicious?’ asked the Frenchwoman.

‘I think they were freaked out that Rumi, who they were projecting on as a Master, suddenly appears as a person shattered by love, crying and unable to organize his experience. And then he was with Shams, this utter nutcase who is obviously going through something immense. They don’t want a Divine experience, they want security, and so they do absolutely everything to stop it, out of a mixture of fear, panic, anxiety, rage at other people’s happiness, incredible self-accusation at not feeling as much as other people, and hatred of beauty — don’t underestimate that: I think we all have it. And so on, and so on, we’re all in this game of comparison.’

Kenneth tiptoed back into the room, looking studiously solemn.

‘But let’s not dwell on all of that,’ sighed Adam. ‘After all, is there anything more sublime in the world than sitting with a group of friends thinking about these things, in a place as incredibly sacred and radiant as this place has been for centuries and centuries. Being here with you I feel gratitude for the Earth, immense gratitude for the Sun. I feel affection for everyone that I’m looking at, because I know that everyone is sincere and searching and Rumi is the great wine-pourer, and something wonderful is going to happen whether we like it or not. We’re in the hands of powers greater than ourselves.’

There was a murmur of appreciation from the room.

‘Let’s end with a poem. I might try to sing it for you…’

‘Uhmm,’ said several people encouragingly.

‘“Those tender words we spoke to one another,

They will be stored in the secret heart of Love,

And one day,

And one day,”’

Adam repeated the line, belting it out at top volume.

‘“They will fall like rain,

And the whole earth will be made green

With our love.”’

Cheers and applause rose from the audience.

‘Isn’t that beautiful?’ purred Adam. ‘The springtime is coming, the real springtime, and this is the agony of childbirth.

‘I love you all,’ said Adam, hurrying towards the door like a man expecting to be mobbed. ‘And I’ll see you at four o’clock.’