Way of the Peaceful Warrior (28 page)

The sun was ominously low; Socrates increased his pace. We were breathing hard now, leaping and clambering from one huge boulder to the next, deep in shadow.
Socrates disappeared into a crack between two boulders and I followed him down a narrow tunnel formed by the huge rocks, and out again in the open. “In case you come back alone, you'll need to use this passageway,” Socrates told me. “It's the only way in or out.” I started to question him, but he silenced me.
 

The light was fading from the sky when we climbed over a final rise. There below us lay a bowl-shaped depression surrounded by soaring cliffs, now covered in shadow. We headed down into the bowl, straight for a jagged peak.
 

“Are we near the burial site yet?” I asked nervously.
 

“We are standing on it,” he said, “standing among the ghosts of an ancient people, a tribe of warriors.”
 

The wind began to buffet us, as if to add emphasis to his words. Then came the most eerie sound I'd ever heard, like a human voice, moaning.
 

“What the hell kind of wind is that?”
 

Without responding, Socrates stopped before a black hole in the face of the cliff and said “Let's go in.”
 

My instincts were wildly signalling danger, but Soc had already entered. Clicking my flashlight on, I left the moaning wind behind me and followed his faint light deeper into the cave. The flickering beam of my light showed pits and crevices whose bottoms I couldn't see.
 

“Soc, I don't like being buried this far back in the mountain.” He glared at me. But to my relief he headed out toward the mouth of the cave. Not that it mattered; it was as dark outside as inside. We made camp, and Socrates took a pile of small logs out of his pack. “Thought we might need these,” he said. The fire was soon crackling. Our bodies cast bizarre, twisted shadows, dancing wildly on the cave wall in front of us, as the flames consumed the logs.
 

Pointing to the shadows, Socrates said, “These shadows in the cave are an essential image of illusion and reality, of suffering and happiness. Here is an ancient story popularized by Plato:
 

There once was a people who lived their entire lives within a Cave of Illusions. After generations, they came to believe that their own shadows, cast upon the walls, were the substance of reality. Only the myths and religious tales spoke of a brighter possibility. Obsessed with the shadow-play, the people became accustomed to and imprisoned by their dark reality.
 

I stared at the shadows and felt the heat of the fire upon my back as Socrates continued.
 

“Throughout history, Dan, there have been blessed exceptions to the prisoners of the Cave. There were those who became tired of the shadow play, who began to doubt it, who were no longer fulfilled by shadows no matter how high they leaped. They became seekers of light. A fortunate few found a guide who prepared them and who took them beyond all illusion into the sunlight.”
 

Captivated by his story, I watched the shadows dance against the granite walls in the yellow light. Soc continued: “All the peoples of the world, Dan, are trapped within the Cave of their own minds. Only those few warriors who see the light, who cut free, surrendering everything, can laugh into eternity. And so will you, my friend.”
 

“It sounds unreachable, Soc--and somehow frightening.”
 

“It is beyond searching and beyond fear. Once it happens, you will see that it is only obvious, simple, ordinary, awake, and happy. It is only reality, beyond the shadows.”
 

We sat in a stillness broken only by the sound of crackling logs. I watched Socrates, who appeared to be waiting for something. I had an uneasy feeling, but the faint light of dawn, revealing the mouth of the cave, revived my spirits.
 

But then the cave was again shrouded in darkness. Socrates stood quickly and walked to the entrance with me right behind. The air smelled of ozone as we stepped outside. I could feel the static electricity raise the hairs on the back of my neck. Then the thunderstorm struck.
 

Socrates whirled around to face me. “There's not much time left. You must escape the cave; eternity is not so far away!”
 

Lightning flashed. A bolt struck one of the cliffs in the distance. “Hurry!” Socrates said, with an urgency I'd not heard before. In that moment, the Feeling came to me---the feeling that had never been wrong--and it brought me the words, “Beware---Death is stalking.”
 

Then Socrates spoke again, his voice ominous and strident. “There's danger here. Get further back into the cave.” I started to look in my pack for my flashlight, but he barked at me, “Move!”
 

I retreated into the blackness and pressed against the wall. Hardly breathing, I waited for him to come get me, but he had disappeared.
 

As I was about to call out to him, I was jarred almost unconscious as something vise-like suddenly gripped me behind my neck with crushing force and dragged me back, deeper into the cave. “Socrates!” I screamed. “Socrates!”
 

The grip on my neck released, but then a far more terrible pain began: my head was being crushed from behind. I screamed, and screamed again. Just before my skull shattered with the maddening pressure, I heard these words---unmistakably the voice of Socrates:
 

“This is your final journey.”
 

With a horrible crack, the pain vanished. I crumpled, and hit the floor of the cavern with a soft thud. Lightning flashed, and in its momentary glare I could see Socrates standing over me, staring down. Then came the sound of thunder from another world. That's when I knew I was dying.
 

One of my legs hung limp over the edge of a deep hole. Socrates pushed me over the precipice, into the abyss, and I fell, bouncing, smashing against the rocks, falling down into the bowels of the earth, and then dropping through an opening, I was released by the mountain out into the sunlight, where my shattered body spun downward, finally landing in a heap in a wet grin meadow, far, far below.
 

The body was now a broken, twisted piece of meat. Carrion birds, rodents, insects, and worms came to feed on the decomposing flesh that I had once imagined to be “me.” Time passed faster and faster. The days flashed by and the sky became a rapid blinking, an alternation of light and darkness, flickering faster and faster into a blur; then the days turned to weeks, and the weeks became months.
 

The seasons changed, and the remains of the body began to dissolve into the soil, enriching it. The frozen snows of winter served my bones for a moment in time, but as the seasons flash by in ever more rapid cycles, even the bones became dust. From the
nourishment of my body, flowers and trees grew and died in that meadow. Finally even the meadow disappeared.
 

I had become part of the carrion birds that had feasted on my flesh, part of the insects and rodents, and part of their predators in a great cycle of life and death. I became their ancestors, until ultimately, they too were returned to the earth.
 

The Dan Millman who had lived long ago was gone forever, a flashing moment in time--but I remained unchanged through all ages. I was now Myself, the Consciousness which observed all, was all. All my separate parts would continue forever; forever changing, forever new.
 

I realized now that the Grim Reaper, the Death Dan Millman had so feared, had been his great illusion. And so his life, too, had been an illusion, a problem, nothing more than a humorous incident when Consciousness had forgotten Itself.
 

While Dan had lived, he had not passed through the gate; he had not realized his true nature; he had lived in mortality and fear, alone.
 

But I knew. If he had only known then what I know now.
 

I lay on the floor of the cave, smiling. I sat up against the wall then gazed into darkness, puzzled, but without fear.
 

My eyes began to adjust, and I saw a white-haired man sitting near me, smiling. Then, from thousands of years away, it all came. This struck me as very funny; everything did, and so I started to laugh. I looked at Socrates; our eyes gleamed ecstatically. I knew that he knew what I knew. I leaped forward and hugged him. We danced around the cavern, laughing wildly at my death.
 

Afterward, we packed and headed down the mountainside. We cut through the passageway, down through ravines and across fields of boulders toward our base camp.
 

I didn't speak much, but I laughed often, because every time I looked around--at the earth, the sky, the sun, the trees, the lakes, the streams--I remembered that it was all Me!
 

All these years Dan Millman had grown up, straggling to “be a somebody.” Talk about backwards! He had been a somebody, locked into a fearful mind and a mortal body.
 

“Well,” I thought, “Now I am playing Dan Millman again, and I might as well get used to it for a few more seconds in eternity, until it too passes. But now I know that I am not only the single piece of flesh--and that secret makes all the difference.”
 

There was no way to describe the impact of this knowledge. I was simply awake.
 

And so I awoke to reality, free of any meaning or any search. What could there possibly be to search for? All of Soc's words had come alive with my death. This was the paradox of it all, the humor of it all, and the great change. All searches, all achievements, all goals, were equally enjoyable, and equally unnecessary.
 

Energy coursed through my body. I overflowed with happiness and burst with laughter; it was the laugh of an unreasonably happy man.
 

And so we walked down, past the highest lakes, past the edge of the timberline, and into the thick forest, heading down to the stream where we'd camped two days---or a thousand years--ago.
 

I had lost all my roles, all my morals, all my fear back there on the mountain. I could no longer be controlled. What punishment could possibly threaten me? Yet, though I had no code of behavior.
 

I felt what was balanced, what was appropriate, and what was loving. I was capable of loving action, and nothing else. He had said it; what could be a greater power?
 

I had lost my mind and fallen into my heart. The gate had finally opened, and I had tumbled through, laughing, because it too, was a joke. It was a gateless gate, another illusion, another image that Socrates had woven into the fabric of my reality, as he'd promised long ago. I had finally seen what there was to see. The path would continue, without end; but now, it was full of light.
 

It was turning dark by the time we reached our camp. We made a fire, and ate a small meal of dried fruit and sunflower seeds, the last of my stores. Only then, as the firelight flickered against our faces, did Socrates speak.
 

“You'll lose it, you know.,
 

“Lose what?”
 

“Your vision. It is rare---only possible through an unlikely set of circumstances, but it is an experience, so you'll lose it.”
 

“Perhaps that's true, Socrates, but who cares?” I laughed. “I've also lost my mind and can't seem to find it anywhere!”
 

He raised his eyebrows in pleased surprise. “Well, then, it appears that my work with you is complete. My debt is paid.”
 

“Wow! I grinned. “Do you mean this is graduation day for me.”
 

“No, Dan, this is graduation day for me.”
 

He stood, put his pack on his shoulders, and walked off, melting into the shadows.
 

It was time to return to the station, where it had all begun. Somehow, I had a feeling that Socrates was already there, waiting for me. At sunrise, I packed my knapsack and started down the mountain.
 

The trip out of the wilderness took several days. I caught a ride into Fresno, then followed 101 up into San Jose, then back to Palo Alto. It was hard to believe that I'd only left the apartment a few weeks ago, a hopeless “somebody.”
 

I unpacked and drove to Berkeley, arriving in the familiar streets at three in the afternoon, long before Socrates came on duty. I parked up on Piedmont and walked down through campus. School had just begun and students were busy being students. I walked down Telegraph Avenue and watched the shopkeepers playing perfect shopkeepers. Everywhere I visited--the fabric shops, the markets, the movie theaters and massage parlors--everyone was perfectly being what they believed they were.
 

I walked up University, then along Shattuck, passing through the streets like a happy phantom, the Buddha's ghost. I wanted to whisper in peoples' ears, “Wake up! Wake up! Soon the person you believe you are will die--so now, wake up and be content with this.
 

I wanted to say it to everyone I met, but if I had, they might have considered me deranged or even dangerous. I knew the wisdom of silence.
 

The shops were closing. In a few hours it would be time for Soc's shift at the station. I drove to the hills, left my car, and sat on a cliff overlooking the Bay. I looked down upon the city of San Francisco in the distance, and at the Golden Gate. I could feel it all, the birds nestled in their nests in the woods of Tiburon, Matin, and Sausalito. I felt the life of the city, the lovers embracing, the criminals at work, the social volunteers giving what they could. And I knew that all of it, the goods and bads, the high and low, sacred and profane, were all a perfect part of the Play. Everyone played their roles so
well! And I was all of it, every smidgen of it. I gazed to the ends of the world, and loved it all.