I am optimistic about the reckoning of truth and ignorance
The Razor’s Edge by Somerset Maugham is a philosophical novel. It tells the story of Larry Darrell, a young American traumatized by his experiences in World War I. Larry rejects the conventional path of career, marriage, and material success. Instead, he chooses a life of wandering and study, traveling to Paris and India. His journey leads him to a profound spiritual awakening. Maugham appears as both a character and the narrator in the story. At the end, he and Larry have a conversation about Larry’s experience and its potential significance for humanity. I quote a few pages of the text here because they provide context to a brilliant passage at the end that I have remembered for decades and that continues to influence my writing about meditation. I include the pages also because the text is both pleasant and inspiring to read.
“Larry had been silent for a few minutes, and unwilling to hurry him, I waited. Presently he gave me a friendly little smile as though he had suddenly once more become aware of me.
‘When I got down to Travancore I found I needn’t have asked for information about Shri Ganesha. Everyone knew of him. For many years he’d lived in a cave in the hills, but finally he’d been persuaded to move down to the plain where some charitable person had given him a plot of land and had built a little adobe house for him. It was a long way from Trivandrum, the capital, and it took me all day, first by train and then by bullock cart, to get to the Ashrama. I found a young man at the entrance of the compound and asked him if I could see the Yogi. I’d brought with me the basket of fruit which is the customary gift to offer. In a few minutes the young man came back and led me into a long hall with windows all around it. In one corner Shri Ganesha sat in the attitude of meditation on a raised dais covered with a tiger skin. I’ve been expecting you, he said. I was surprised, but supposed my friend of Madura had told him something about me. But he shook his head when I mentioned his name. I presented my fruit and he told the young man to take it away. We were left alone and he looked at me without speaking. I don’t know how long the silence lasted. It might nave been for half an hour. I’ve told you what he looked like; what I haven’t told you is the serenity that he irradiated, the goodness, the peace, the selflessness. I was hot and tired after my journey, but gradually I began to feel wonderfully rested. Before he’d said another word I knew that this was the man I’d been seeking.’
‘Did he speak English?’ I interrupted.
‘No. But, you know, I’m pretty quick at languages, I’d picked up enough Tamil to understand and make myself understood in the South. At last he spoke.
‘What have you come here for?’ he asked.
‘I began to tell him how I’d come to India and how I’d passed my time for three years; how, on report of their wisdom and sanctity, I’d gone to one holy man after another and had found no one to give me what I looked for. He interrupted me.
‘All that I know. There is no need to tell me. What have you come here for?’
‘So that you may be my Guru,’ I answered.
‘Brahman alone is the Guru,’ he said.
‘He continued to look at me with a strange intensity and then suddenly his body became rigid, his eyes seemed to turn inwards and I saw that he’d fallen into the trance which the Indians call Samadhi and in which they hold the duality of subject and object vanishes and you become Knowledge Absolute. I was sitting cross-legged on the floor, in front of him, and my heart beat violently. After how long a time I don’t know he sighed and I realized that he had recovered normal consciousness. He gave me a glance sweet with loving-kindness.
‘Stay,’ he said. ‘They will show you where you may sleep.’
I was given as a dwelling-place the shack in which Shri Ganesha had lived when first he came down to the plain. The hall in which he now passed both day and night had been built when disciples gathered around him and more and more people attracted by his fame, came to visit him. So that I mightn’t be conspicuous I adopted the comfortable Indian dress and I got so sunburnt that unless your attention was drawn to me you might have taken me for a native. I read a great deal. I meditated. I listened to Shri Ganesha when he chose to talk; he didn’t talk very much, but he was always willing to answer questions and it was wonderfully inspiring to listen to him. It was like music in your ears. Though in his youth he had himself practised very severe austerities he did not enjoin them on his disciples. He sought to wean them from the slavery of selfhood, passion and sense, and told them that they could acquire liberation by tranquillity, restraint, renunciation, resignation, by steadfastness of mind and by an ardent desire for freedom. People used to come from the nearby town three or four miles away, where there was a famous temple to which great crowds flocked once a year for a festival; they came from Trivandrum and from far-off places to tell him their troubles, to ask his advice, to listen to his teaching; and all went away strengthened in soul and at peace with themselves. What he taught was very simple. He taught that we are all greater than we know and that wisdom is the means to freedom. He taught that it is not essential to salvation to retire from the world, but only to renounce the self. He taught that work done with no selfish interest purifies the mind and that duties are opportunities afforded to man to sink his separate self and become one with the universal self. But it wasn’t his teaching that was so remarkable; it was the man himself, his benignity, his greatness of soul, his saintliness. His presence was a benediction. I was very happy with him. I felt that at last I had found what I wanted. The weeks, the months passed with unimaginable rapidity. I proposed to stay either till he died and he told us that he did not intend very much longer to inhabit his perishable body, or till I received illumination, that state when you have at last burst the bonds of ignorance, and know with a certainty there is no disputing that you and the Absolute are one.’
He taught that work done with no selfish interest purifies the mind and that duties are opportunities afforded to man to sink his separate self and become one with the universal self.
‘And then?’
‘Then, if what they say is true, there is nothing more. The soul’s course on earth is ended and it will return no more.’
‘And is Shri Ganesha dead?’ I asked.
‘Not so far as I know.’
As he spoke he saw what was implied in my question and gave a light laugh. He went on after a moment’s hesitation, but in such a manner as led me at first to suppose that he wished to avoid answering the second question that he well knew was on the tip of my tongue, the question, of course, whether he had received illumination.
‘I didn’t stay at the Ashrama continuously. I was lucky enough to make the acquaintance of a native forestry officer whose permanent residence was on the outskirts of a village at the foot of the mountains. He was a devotee of Shri Ganesha and when he could get away from his work came and spent two or three days with us. He was a nice fellow and we had long talks. He liked to practise his English on me. After I’d known him for some time, he told me that the forestry service had a bungalow up in the mountains and if ever I wanted to go there to be by myself he would give me the key. I went there now and then. It was a two-day journey; first you had to go by bus to the forestry officer’s village, then you had to walk, but when you got there it was magnificent in its grandeur and its solitude. I took what I could in a knapsack on my back and hired a bearer to carry provisions for me, and I stayed till they were exhausted. It was only a log cabin with a cookhouse behind it and for furniture there was nothing but a trestle bed on which to put your sleeping-mat, a table and a couple of chairs. It was cool up there and at times it was pleasant to light a fire at night. It gave me a wonderful thrill to know that there wasn’t a living soul within twenty miles of me. At night I used often to hear the roar of a tiger or the racket of elephants as they crashed through the jungle. I used to take long walks in the forest. There was one place where I loved to sit because from it I saw the mountains spread before me and below, a lake to which at dusk the wild animals, deer, pig, bison, elephant, leopard came to drink.
‘When I’d been at the Ashrama just two years I went up to my forest retreat for a reason that’ll make you smile. I wanted to spend my birthday there. I got there the day before. Next morning I awoke before dawn and I thought I’d go and see the sunrise from the place I’ve just told you about. I knew the way blindfold. I sat down under a tree and waited. It was night still, but the stars were pale in the sky, and day was at hand. I had a strange feeling of suspense. So gradually that I was hardly aware of it light began to filter through the darkness, slowly, like a mysterious figure slinking between the trees. I felt my heart beating as though at the approach of danger. The sun rose.’
Larry paused and a rueful smile played on his lips.
‘I have no descriptive talent, I don’t know the words to paint a picture; I can’t tell you, so as to make you see it, how grand the sight was that was displayed before me as the day broke in its splendour. Those mountains with their deep jungle, the mist still entangled in the treetops, and the bottomless lake far below me. The sun caught the lake through a cleft in the heights and it shone like burnished steel. I was ravished with the beauty of the world. I’d never known such exaltation and such a transcendent joy. I had a strange sensation, a tingling that arose in my feet and travelled up to my head, and I felt as though I were suddenly released from my body and as pure spirit partook of a loveliness I had never conceived. I had a sense that a knowledge more than human possessed me, so that everything that had been confused was clear and everything that had perplexed me was explained. I was so happy that it was pain and I struggled to release myself from it, for I felt that if it lasted a moment longer I should die; and yet it was such rapture that I was ready to die rather than forgo it. How can I tell you what I felt? No words can tell the ecstasy of my bliss. When I came to myself I was exhausted and trembling. I fell asleep.
I had a sense that a knowledge more than human possessed me, so that everything that had been confused was clear and everything that had perplexed me was explained.
‘It was high noon when I woke. I walked back to the bungalow, and I was so light at heart that it seemed to me that I hardly touched the ground. I made myself some food, gosh, I was hungry, and I lit my pipe.’
Larry lit his pipe now.
‘I dared not think that this was illumination that I, Larry Darrell of Marvin, Illinois, had received when others striving for it for years, with austerity and mortification, still waited.’
‘What makes you think that it was anything more than a hypnotic condition induced by your state of mind combined with the solitude, the mystery of the dawn and the burnished steel of your lake?’
‘Only my overwhelming sense of its reality. After all it was an experience of the same order as the mystics have had all over the world through all the centuries. Brahmins in India, Sufis in Persia, Catholics in Spain, Protestants in New England; and so far as they’ve been able to describe what defies description they’ve described it in similar terms. It’s impossible to deny the fact of its occurrence; the only difficulty is to explain it. If I was for a moment one with the Absolute or if it was an inrush from the subconscious of an affinity with the universal spirit which is latent in all of us, I wouldn’t know.’
Larry paused for an instant and threw me a quizzical glance.
‘By the way, can you touch your little finger with your thumb?’ he asked.
‘Of course,’ I said with a laugh, proving it with the appropriate action.
‘Are you aware that that’s something that only man and the primates can do? It’s because the thumb is opposable to the other digits that the hand is the admirable instrument it is. Isn’t it possible that the opposable thumb, doubtless in a rudimentary form, was developed in the remote ancestor of man and the gorilla in certain individuals, and was a characteristic that only became common to all after innumerable generations? Isn’t it at least possible that these experiences of oneness with Reality that so many diverse persons have had point to a development in the human consciousness of a sixth sense which in the far, far future will be common to all men so that they may have as direct a perception of the Absolute as we have now of the objects of sense?’
‘And how would you expect that to affect them?’ I asked.
‘I can as little tell you that as the first creature that found it could touch its little finger with its thumb could have told you what infinite consequences were entailed in that insignificant action. So far as I’m concerned I can only tell you that the intense sense of peace, joy and assurance that possessed me in that moment of rapture abides with me still and that the vision of the world’s beauty is as fresh and vivid now as when first my eyes were dazzled by it.’”
The Razor’s Edge is a work of fiction. However, Maugham’s writing style blurs the line between fiction and reality. The novel is narrated in the first person by a character named “Maugham,” who closely resembles the author himself, adding a semi-autobiographical layer to the storytelling. Larry’s spiritual quest reflects Maugham’s interest in Eastern philosophies and mysticism.
Larry’s question and observations about the opposable thumb is a passage that has stayed with me for decades. Larry suggests that the opposable thumb probably began in a rudimentary form in a remote ancestor and became common to all only after many generations. He speculates that his experience of oneness with Reality could similarly become common—though he expects this will occur in the far, far future.
The concept of enlightenment is often treated as privileged, attainable only after decades of formal meditation practice, and perhaps only after many lifetimes. It is commonly assumed that enlightenment cannot be properly defined, and it is considered bad form to claim to have achieved it. While it may once have been rare, I propose that the frequency of such experiences may be accelerating. Larry had to travel and uncover spiritual knowledge from uncommon individuals and rare books. Since Maugham wrote his book, the internet has exponentially increased access to knowledge of all kinds, including esoteric knowledge. I suggest that the ongoing reification of enlightenment is an obstacle to spiritual growth.
Certainly, new opposing forces have arisen to enforce ignorance and darkness. However, the state of the planet compels evolution. Larry believes that the experience of oneness will eventually become a direct perception, akin to a sixth sense. In his transcendent state of consciousness, appearances became revealing. He experienced a sensory union with the earth: the mountains, the jungle, the mist in the treetops, and the sun on the bottomless lake. He beheld the beauty of the earth—a loveliness he had never conceived. I am optimistic about the reckoning of truth and ignorance.
