CHAPTER 20. THE UNIQUENESS OF CREATION

April 20, 1998.

“Hurry up and choose, don't hold up the line!” thirty-year-old Francois Samson said with great dissatisfaction to Christian Bonheur: at that moment they were at one of France's unusually lively markets in front of a completely full stall of an elderly meat vendor—"You're taking so long to choose, as if your life or death depends on this choice! You are choosing meat, rabbit meat, and not a personal computer or its components!.. look, just for you, Intel just announced the Pentium II Xeon processor today...”

“You shouldn't rush me... Your wit is not entirely appropriate—if you saw everything in this world as it really is, you certainly wouldn't be rushing me: you are blind... and your fervor and your reactions are proof of that...”

“Or maybe I should just take you and push you out of here or use some other physical means to convey my firm intentions to you?!”

“Are you ready to inflict bodily harm on me just because you didn't get here before me? Forgive me... when I said you were just blind, I was mistaken... You are also incapable of heeding the human voice!.. You don't realize what kind of world you are in—one word, one glance can instantly change an entire human life here, let alone actions!”

“Enough chatter! Choose faster, or I will...”

“...be able to convince me that I am acting reasonably by not rushing? Oh, yes... you are incapable of that! And if I told you that of the two rabbits presented here by the vendor, consuming the meat of one will give me life, extend my health, while the other will destroy me... How would you look at me then?!”

“You really are crazy!”

“Look at these two aggregates of mortal matter—they look identical, meaty and pleasant, but... which one should I choose? Their appearance is the same, but the essence and the result they carry are different!”

“And how did you figure that out?”

“Certainly not with my mind! I am making an unconscious choice in favor of the one on the right of these two rabbits...”

“Justify it...”

“There is no explanation... I repeat, this choice is unconscious, and therefore the mind is not subject to clothing it in the form of definitions, and consequently, limitations. When your being is in harmony with the Universe, when it is full, then it is intuitively, metaphysically strong, and consequently will always choose the right option out of a thousand suggestions. This is an unconscious choice for the mind, but a conscious one for what is above the mind and form—for the soul! Sometimes we don't understand why we want to choose something, to get exactly this, but our soul, which is above the mind, which knows many times more, is perfectly aware of this, and therefore calls for this choice quite loudly! My eyes did not see what exactly happened to this meat, but my soul, being a part of the Universe, sees what is unknown to my flesh! Perhaps a series, a chain of events, took place before this moment, which, in the event of one wrong choice on my part, will lead to my death—here's an example... a worker was performing labor at a saltpeter factory... during his lunch break, he went outside the factory grounds and sat down under the crown of an old tree to have lunch... while he was working, he didn't even notice that a certain amount of saltpeter had gotten into one of his pockets... under the tree, this saltpeter spilled from his pocket... after lunch, he left from under the crown of the tree... two hours later, a rabbit escaped from the farm neighboring the factory... approaching the tree, it ate grass with saltpeter absorbed into its flesh... a few hours later, it was caught, and in the evening its life was taken...”

“Well, why don't you just take the other one and tell the vendor about it?”

“Because my eyes didn't see all this, and I don't know from the beginning which of them, of the choices, is the right one... And you are rushing me!”

“Forgive me!”

“It's nothing...”

“Well, you choose then, and in the meantime I'll occupy myself with something else—for example, I'll listen to the conversation between these two people...” Francois Samson said and turned all his attention to the conversation of some truly extraordinary people six steps away from him.

“My creation, my art, unlike yours, is unique and exceptional!” said proudly the one whose profession was directly related to pottery—“I can make a vase of any shape and figure, paint it, and it will be the best decoration in your house! My art is exceptional and especially valuable when... its results overcome centuries and become messages to the future from ancient times...”

“And I can make from metal anything I want!” a fifty-four-year-old burly blacksmith angrily countered.

“Each of you is stubborn in your righteousness,” a forty-two-year-old musician suddenly said calmly from nowhere—“but you should both go to the theater with a symphony orchestra... if you heard these melodies, these works of human thought and human feeling, you would both realize that you were blind... you would despise your former thoughts and would know that every art in this world is exceptional, for its lot is to glorify beauty, to exalt virtue, and to make this world better! Before hearing that music, you would consider yourselves entire Universes, and after hearing it—you would admit that you are only parts of it! The musician's creation, his music, is a second, an instant, an escaping ray of sun at the end of a winter day: it could not be re-watched, re-heard before—to do so, it was necessary to assemble the entire orchestra again! Music, like a dazzling flash of lightning, is capable of igniting the most hidden and secret feelings in us—those who lived before felt this, for they understood that they might never hear it again... never again admire this miracle! Your brilliant vases and metal products are material, they can be touched with hands, but music is the sound of thunder: you cannot look at it—you can feel it, and only then remember it in your mind...”