Peter and the wolf

A love by opposites

Chapter 7 Peter and the wolf

Peter read the bedtime story, ' Peter and the wolf ' to the children and put them to sleep. He came downstairs and went into the study. After the first few months of data collection, he had written the first draft.

He poured himself a brandy and took a sip before resting on the easy chair. Diane came in to join him after finishing up in the kitchen. He poured her a glass.

“It's not complete,” she suggested.

He nodded. He absolutely loved the insights she brought to their discussions.

“If the innamorata and the mahimorata are engaged in a play, like the Indian experience of ' Leela,' at some point it is going to break down and turn into a dream-like experience in the mind without any relation to life.”

Peter agreed.

“The Indian handles it in two ways. One is to engage it like a householder, identify himself as the mahimorata and the wife the innamorata. It is quite a love affair.”

He shifted in his chair.

“The second is to handle it as an individual innamorata in relation to the world as the mahimorata.”

'They have to relate it to the environment. There must be a physical relation and bodily contact,” she surmised.

“The scheme is at best stable in an actual household between the husband and wife. The swamy is undertaking something quite unusual. As the mahimorata, he is deifying the innamorata as the wife. That experience of the wife is idolized as divinity. It is the same scheme in the temple. The priest is in a sense the mahimorata and the idol of the goddess, the innamorata.”

Diane listened intently. Coming from a country where the men are Tzars, she related to it as the innamorata, while she saw herself as the mahimorata.

“Why is it formed in stone in the temple?” she asked.

Peter pursed his lips in thought and then answered,

“It's not yet trained, in the mind of the individual.”

Diane looked at him curiously. She hesitated for a moment, but decided to press ahead.

“What is she being trained for,” she asked.

Peter finished his drink and got up to fill the glass. She gestured that she was fine.

“It is an awesome responsibility for someone to take on a role of knowing everything and to draw from there, that which is useful in a particular situation. The innamorata goes into a faint....at least that's what Neela thinks.”

“But the human condition is to learn it for himself, is he not?”

“Well, both the Swamy and Neela seem to think that it takes place in stages over many lives. Each time, the experience gets a bit more difficult and then they are finally left to their own devices, to define, cultivate and live the truth that they themselves create.”

“You mean the lives of people in the world.”

“Yes,” Peter said, cautiously, “ a Russian today, an Arab the next, Scandinavian, European, American, African, Chinese and then back to being Indian where they will collate all these past lives and learn from them.”

He continued as if in a trance.

“Each time, it is a little different. It may start with a dream-like experience, or it may engage the physical body, then possibly in terms of sense perceptions and finally in physical living experience.”

They stared at each other and didn't say anything for a few minutes.

“Wasn't it Shakespeare in 'Hamlet' who said there are more things in heaven than in our imagination?” Peter asked rhetorically.

“So how far are you going with this?” she asked.

“Well,Neela is a senior to the Swamy. For the Swamy, its him and the idol of the goddess as the inner wife, for Neela it's the individual and the world.”

“Real life husband and wife?” she asked.

“That may be us,” he replied, smiling.

She thought about it for a moment.

“That might mean, for the west it is a relationship between lovers.” she pronounced from her own insight.

“That's hardly surprising,” he responded. “How did they get from a decadent society to a paradise for lovers?” he asked.

“When we got democracy,” she answered.