15. EVE — The Dolan House Non-meeting
So. a few days later they gathered at Dolan House, Adam’s lair.
Adam lay on the bed. Eve sat on the floor. Mason took the chair. They didn’t know where things would lead. But they had all thought about Adam’s questions.
Eve began: “Consciousness is a field of being that exists in and beyond us. Much more is not definitively known. Just that it exists and shows we are more than individuals and that our individuality is a function of being conscious.”
Mason chimed in. “Any thought that divides things is ultimately false. Mystery arises from what cannot yet be seen as part of the all.”
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From Eve — A Semiotic novel. VOLUME TWO. VOLUME ONE is published and available here.
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Adam seemed to groan, but the sound was his familiar way of suggesting an underlying comic motif in his utterances.
“My thought is that all is really all and we exist in it. But when we accede to theories that exclude what we sense as realities, we mask mystery with false assurance.”
Eve and Mason both nodded.
“We have moved,” Eve said, “but we are not ready to continue. We need words. We are not ready to create then now. The questions remain.”
Eve and Mason walked out and down the hill from the truncated meeting.
“I am impressed that you are comfortable with ‘all’” Eve said.
“I am impressed by it because it is more sensible than statements that assume that everything is matter,” Mason replied. “ ‘All is real’ is a more honest statement. Everything is everything and our words for what it is composed of are still a bit speculative. So, yes, I like your construction. Everything is reality.”
“I’ll give you an example,” Eve said. “We have a bushel of near death narratives that assume consciousness leaves the body. But there is enough similarity to enable the inference that the statements have cultural aspects. They depend on things we could say are related to classes of experience. There is a conformity that belies the claims.”
“Statements like, ‘Unconditional love?’ ”
“Exactly.”
“And the history of this sort of thing.”
“Yes.”
“You seem anxious to move past the theosophists.”
“I want to move to what activates the needle of universal conscience. You never hear fairness and nonviolence in the same breath with talk of heaven. I cannot buy a view that simply echoes escapism.”
“They are reverting to what the world rightly left. Your binary.”
“Correct. We have to be able to speak of phenomena such as — aaah!”
“But people want labels, identifiers,” Mason said.
“Perhaps,” Eve replied, “we are best advised to do nothing but suggest what good and evil actually are.”
“It might ruin everything,” Mason said. “The academy. The Internet.
“It might,” Eve replied.
“Then again we do nothing. We could be out there reducing harm.”
“I know. St. Francis.”
“Anyone who is connected to others,” Mason said. “I suppose we do well to keep from doing each other in.” Mason said.
“Why do you like to be called Mason?” Eve said. “Curtiss is a nice name.”
“I don’t know. Interesting you should ask,” Mason looked her way and continued, “Masons were among the first English settlers in New England. There is a path named Mason from Cambridge to Watertown, Massachusetts.”
“Peirce’s people came to Watertown,” Eve said.
“Strange, one could confabulate a nice characterological stew of Masons and Peirces.”
“All it would do is remind me of what a blank I am,” Eve said.
“You are not a blank. You have roots like everybody else.”
“Really? How so?”
“You should find them,” Mason said.
Up the hill, Adam stretched and did an audible yawn that lasted several seconds. He had dosed off. He tried and failed to access whatever he was dreaming about.
He wondered why he was here.
He stretched and blew out air from as though extinguishing candles on a cake. He thought he was waking up. This must be what waking up is like, he thought. He wondered why he had not considered this.
Who am I? he asked silently. I would not know, he answered in another voice. He shook his head.
“Yechh,” he said.
