Somersault (25 page)

4

Kizu still wasn’t sure exactly what a guide was supposed to be or do, though it was clear Patron viewed him as both a personal adviser and an adviser to his new movement. Like Ikuo, Kizu was determined to absorb all Patron had to tell him. When he’d given Patron talks on the Welsh poet, Patron had been far from just a student. A new dynamic was at work here, with Patron now endeavoring to educate Kizu. Patron was attempting to revive the doctrine that he and the sick Guide had created—despite having denied it all by doing; their Somersault.

“When Guide and I were young,” he told Kizu, “there was a time when our youthful unease and energy drove us to devour books in order to find out more about mysticism. There was a great inherent difference, though, between our reading abilities. Guide would read books I’d never pick up on my own and then underline or circle in red those parts he thought I’d be interested in. I’d read more than just those parts, of course, but never the entire book. I’d read the chapters that caught his attention enough for him to mark up. And if I didn’t understand that chapter, I’d read the ones that bracketed it.

“Guide would use different-colored pencils to indicate the chapters that were for reference. Once he began to drink (which didn’t happen all that often) he couldn’t stop. He’d adopt this overbearing attitude that he was the one in charge of educating the leader of the church. He’s a detail person, so he made a distinction between what he was teaching me and what was originally within me, something on a different plane from what we usually think of as educating or being educated. Rather, he said he was led by what was inside me to find those kinds of books and read them.

“Does this make me sound pretty full of myself? Guide didn’t treat me as someone with special privileges. He just
happened
to choose me as the Savior—at that point we weren’t using the names Patron or Guide—but he could easily have chosen someone else. What’s most important exists in
every
person, the particles of light or resonance that flow out from the Almighty, the one Being that was there at the beginning, the Always-already who includes
the entire universe. The only difference is that in some people those particles of light are clearer and give off a much more intense resonance.
Yours are extraordinarily clear and intense
, Guide told me when we met; that’s where he found his surety that I was the one.

“At that time, Guide was still teaching mathematics and science in night school. All the various students in his gloomy classroom, he said, each had these particles of light or resonance. He told me he actually got the whole concept of these particles from one of the more progressive textbooks he used for his students.

“Most of us are convinced we’re each active subjects who happen to contain DNA, but most scholars now agree that since the dawn of mankind humans have been little more than containers, vehicles to transport the DNA that determines our individuality.

“Guide taught me his basic doctrine: that the world was created by light radiating from the Almighty, that each of us contains within our bodies and spirits these particles of light or resonance, and eventually these will return to their Creator.

“People tend to believe that each of us as individuals are the center of things, but we really
are
nothing more than vehicles for these particles of light or resonance: just portable containers, until the time when each and every particle of light returns to the Almighty and
becomes
the Almighty. This flowing out and return takes place in a different way from the events that we’re used to thinking about as happening in historical time. Both happen in an instant yet are also occurring eternally.

“I can’t say I really understood what Guide meant at the time. When those particles of light or resonance return to the Almighty, they’ll cast off the body they’ve occupied. They’ll also separate themselves from the spirit, but this doesn’t mean that our individuality is discarded like a used container. Each of our individual souls will become particles of light or resonance and return to the Almighty. I didn’t entirely understand it, but I was drawn to the idea.

“I’ve never prayed in a Christian church—let alone in an Islamic mosque or even a Buddhist temple, for that matter—and what I know about this may be the kind of random knowledge one picks up from movies, TV, and novels, but the faithful do say, don’t they,
Thy will be done?
There’s a scene in the Koran where Abraham and Isaac pray together as one, and you can find the same sort of thing in Buddhist tales.
Thy will be done
, I believe, is a universal element of prayer.

“Even in our own church,
Thy will be done
was the basis of everything we did. I didn’t interpret God in an anthropomorphic way but as the light
that penetrates the world, the universe, the whole, and all the details, each and every one. I said these particles of light or resonance are in me, and I’m just one speck in an infinite number, but these particles of light, like salmon swimming upstream, become part of countless other particles to create one enormous entity as they return to the Almighty. The faithful imagine this One-and-only in an anthropomorphic way, as the originating ultimate Almighty. Call it God, if you wish.

“This being called out once to you, Ikuo, and now you say you want to face that voice again and have me act as intermediary. There was a time, apparently, when you viewed God as something like God in the Old Testament, and I think it’s all right that you want me to be a mediator for you. What the Almighty makes clear through me is directed at
me
, but all you need to do, Ikuo, is press the
SHIFT
key to change it to the voice of God
you
heard in your late teens. My God and the God you heard calling to you are one and the same, since the Almighty penetrates every detail in this world and in the entire universe. There can be
no other God
.

“You can’t forget the voice of God you heard as a teenager. You staked your entire youth on waiting to hear the voice again. Even so, when Guide urged you to ask me to serve as intermediary between you and the Almighty, you hesitated—wondering whether it was right for you, as just one little individual, to do something that might affect
Thy will be done
in the world, in the universe. Guide told me how impressed he was by this young man, so poor in spirit.

“I think Guide knew exactly what he urged you to do. Recently he ran across some words in a sixteenth-century book by a Sufi mystic that supported this belief.
‘The process of all creation, which is from God, being restored to its true state,’
the book said,
‘requires more than simply a propulsive force from God; it also requires a propulsive force found in the religious activities of the created.’
The book goes on to say that
‘this is why the prayerful hold a tremendous power in the inner world, and at the same time a tremendous responsibility to realize their messianic mission.’

“I believe Guide wanted to make this idea the basis for our new movement. And he started by encouraging you, Ikuo. I can imagine how dejected you must have been when he collapsed, but now—with Professor Kizu taking over—you must feel as though you’ve been revived. And when I looked at this painting, I felt exactly the same way!”

9: The Book Already Written

1

When Patron was a child he learned of a book he knew he had to spend his entire life searching for. “How old were you at the time?” Kizu asked, but Patron neatly dodged the question.

It all began when Patron was attending a piano concert in place of his father, who was busy elsewhere; he was seated in special box enclosed in marble next to the main aisle that ran parallel to the stage. Right after the house lights dimmed, a tall skinny man approached him like the shadow of a bird flitting by and said, “You are a unique person, and there’s something written about you in.…”

The man leaned over the enclosure as he spoke and then left swiftly, bent over from the waist like someone late to the concert trying to not bother those already seated, walked quickly to a seat in the rear of the hall, and disappeared.

“It bothered me that I didn’t catch the title of the book,” Patron said. “The concert was an all-Bach program and I was soon carried away by the music, but I found myself wondering whether the music was conveying to me the contents of that book. In other words, the man’s words had an immediate effect, though what sort of content was being communicated, I couldn’t have said. It was as if a surgical laser beam were shining on each word of that book inside me, and it was impossible to read it consciously—at least now that’s how I look at it.”

“I’m sure as you were growing up you read a lot of books,” Kizu said, “but did you ever run across a book and think
This is it?”

Patron let the question pass by like a breath of wind grazing him, not letting it interrupt the rhythm of his narrative. “I never thought I’d run across
an actual book. Still, sometimes I felt like I was reading it and knew all the words in it. If someone made a concordance based on that book, you’d find listed in it all the words I’d ever spoken. Still, my fate as described in that book was something that I created myself over a long period of time.

“I was always searching through large bookstores and libraries for that book, even thinking maybe I should write it myself. Indeed, it was by constructing that book that I ended up living the life I’ve led. Before I could write such a book, I had to live in a way befitting its author. So there was no need to put things down on paper, and I didn’t become an actual writer.”

Patron said no more. While he mulled over his words a thought struck Kizu, a thought so overpowering that if he didn’t suppress it he might burst out with it: Wasn’t the title of that book
Somersault?
he wanted to shout.

He realized right away how flippant this would have been and breathed a sigh of relief that he hadn’t actually voiced the question.

Later on he discovered another reason why he was happy he hadn’t said this at the time; he was no longer convinced that the word
Somersault
could sum up Patron’s whole life. After Patron and Guide admitted the way in which the term had been used to ridicule their actions, Kizu couldn’t quite understand its new connotations. Another thought struck him: that if there was a book called
Somersault
he wanted to read it because it would contain something written about
him
.

With all this as background, Kizu was able to draw out from Patron a more focused response about his special book. On this particular day they were all discussing the mystical experiences Patron had had that Guide had described to Kizu and Ikuo. Deepening his understanding of this was, for Kizu, of the utmost importance. As the person chosen by Patron to be his new adviser, Kizu wanted to take over Guide’s responsibilities as much as he could. But ever since he’d agreed to assume the role, Patron had been somewhat casual about it, never pressing him. Still, he felt increasingly anxious.

“Guide told us once,” Kizu began, “that when you are in a trance you’re standing in front of a whitely glowing object, like a net that shows the entire past, present, and future of the world. I always assumed that mystical experiences meant you were communicating directly with God, which is why I thought this netlike structure must
be
God. The structure also struck me as a fantastic model of the world’s whole past, present, and future. But the other day the idea came to me that perhaps this whitely glowing model itself is that one-of-a-kind book you told us about. So when you’re in your trance you’re focused entirely on reading that book.”

“I agree,” Patron said, his response so matter-of-fact that Kizu had doubts about what he’d just said. “But if I’d told Guide, when I related my
visions to him, that it was the same as reading that book he wouldn’t have accepted it. Books are limited in all kinds of ways, aren’t they? A book has words printed in it. While you read it you can’t change it. Reading can’t be the same as living in the real world. Guide insisted on this rather simplistic line of reasoning.

“If you look carefully at that whitely glowing structure, you’ll see that inside the net there are rapidly moving minute particles. Since it’s structured this way, you can read your own present, Guide said, and you can live it and change your future. What I meant by a special book was exactly this type of new-style book.”

“So,” Kizu began, summoning up his courage, “was the Somersault, then, a kind of misreading the two of you had, as leaders of the church and, more specifically, of the activities of the radical faction? And didn’t you and Guide notice this?”

“A
misreading?”
Patron gave it some thought.

Just as Kizu was about to withdraw his careless comment, Patron answered him with unexpectedly honest words.

“In this large book there’s one thing that can’t be misread, and that is the fact that, if mankind fails to repent, an irreversible time is fast approaching. Truthfully, though, if I were to describe for you the scene of the end of the world that I spoke about in the afterglow of my trance, and that Guide heard in the context of words on this side and then related to me, you’d be discouraged by how very ordinary it is. It’s a picture of a medium-sized provincial city here in Japan. The afternoon is shining down on the scene, but it’s entirely desolate. No dogs wandering around, no napping cats. The streets are filthy with garbage, but the amount remains the same; no garbage has been freshly discarded. All manufacturing facilities have stopped. The people haven’t been completely eliminated yet but are living off the remains of what’s been manufactured and not replacing them once they’re used up. There’s no electricity, no running water, no public transportation. Everyone’s waiting for death in inconspicuous corners of this city, lying there, curled up, helpless babies once again, bereft of the skills needed to live.