“And yet,” he finally replies, “for a consciousness convinced of the righteousness of Gnostic doctrine, you display an excessive attachment to the world of forms. Do I not detect a contradiction here?”
He pauses for a minuscule moment, touching the tip of his pen to his chin—a habitual gesture, an illustration of thought. From his speech, terms keep escaping, like sparks from under a piano lid: “hylic nature,” “demiurgic impulse,” “anamnesis of the spirit.” At times, it seems he is deliberately weaving a lacework of meanings beyond your reach. But in the narrowing of his red eyes, there is no malice—only a long-ingrained habit of thinking in complex categories.
A habit of speaking not to people, but to eternity. Of entering into polemics with an entire universe.
“Following your own logic,” he continues, the pen in his fingers never ceasing to trace some signs across an open journal, “it is precisely prajña and bodhi that should become your true key to liberation from the shackles of the archons, and your chief object of concern. Yet here you are, still fretting over where your temporal shell finds itself and with whom it currently shares space. Does that not strike you as somewhat… inconsistent?”
The journal on the table seems painfully familiar. Perhaps you have seen this handwriting before. In some other world. How does he manage, simultaneously, to conduct this strange conversation with you and, without pause, cover the pages with dense script? The very thought of it slips away, dissolves.
The lamp flickers suspiciously—once, twice, three times. The light trembles, and the contours of the study begin to waver. With difficulty, you prise apart your heavy lids, and the image of the tall floor lamp doubles, mingling with the deathly, cold sunlight gazing indifferently through the window. The outlines of the professor’s figure thin out, like mist at dawn.
Only the question remains, suspended in the silence of waking: who was this man? And what became of him?