Tom was unaware of his present condition and would not have been much troubled by it were he to have known it. Every minute of every day for more than a decade had been spent in trying to disassociate himself from the distractions of the flesh, in an attempt to obtain the Platonic ideal of attaining truth through introspection--of trying to see past the imperfect shadows of the physical world into the realm of the true forms. He was neither bitter nor troubled by the currents of criticism which sought for some years to carry him away, branding him as misguided, then as a reactionary fool clinging with mindless tenacity to obsolete notions of reality, and finally as an amusing anachronism that no longer needed to be acknowledged or explained away. He was only mildly annoyed when his scholarly treatises were no longer published by the leading peer-reviewed journals of philosophy; if they could not validate his views, it was not a reflection on his work, only on the fatuousness of what passed for referees in academia these days. He had not obtained his Ph.Ds. in philosophy and physics for anyone’s benefit but his own, and did not need the approval of his peers to legitimize his theories. And, in any case, his work in his other fields of physics and mathematics was published regularly.
He had learned long ago to cast off his emotions, to develop and enhance the power of his mind by shedding off the yoke of the body’s destructive, distracting influence on the quest for truth. And his self-denial had paid off handsomely. His body had, of course, suffered in the process, but that was of little consequence to Tom. The ancient Greeks, he felt, were misguided in pursuing the ideal of a healthy body and a healthy mind. To treat the body and the mind as equals was sheer folly. Certainly an infirm body would interfere with mental processes; the body must be given rudimentary nourishment and care; else it would die. But what is the logic in devoting endless hours in selecting one’s diet, in exercise, or, worse, in leisure? Who but a fool would add five years of life through constant pampering, exercise, and perfect nutrition while wasting ten years of life in the process?
Flesh is the primordial enemy of the mind; its needs, wants and constant yearnings are an intolerable distraction which, far from being encouraged, must be eradicated through studied self-denial. Surely anyone could see that. But it is far easier to deny an obvious fact than it is to admit it and then lack the fortitude to implement its logical conclusions. Such is the destructive power of the flesh, that it will obfuscate the mind, not only clouding reason, but making it serve its purpose through endless rationalization, ignoring anything that threatens its narrow, hedonistically defined comfort zone. How sad, he thought, that the old sophists, those cursed foes of truth, had finally won over the minds of modern humanity which prizes expediency, pragmatism, political correctness and the comfort of the status quo above its very soul.
Tom floated motionlessly in an endless void. He was deprived of sensory information, but his mind was keen and sharply focused. While he could not touch, hear, see, smell or speak in his present condition, he was not in a state of complete sensory deprivation, for his mind could sense its surroundings, though not quite clearly, as if he were watching a poorly tuned old analog television set through oil-stained glasses. Though incorporeal, he was self-aware. He recognized his state as one of preparation for entering into a new realm of consciousness, a communion with the realm of the true forms--of absolute truth.
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He’d been close before so many times to attaining true enlightenment; but every time, some accursed facet of his appetites would drag him down to earth again, the profane weakness of the flesh damning him to the shadowy realms of the pedantic existence we call life. He knew the signs well by now; he recognized the halfway place between shadow and light wherein he’d dwelt so many times before--a higher plane of existence leading to absolute truth. Even now, he felt the power of the true forms, newly draped in evanescent shadows, thinly veiling their true essence this close to their source. Absolute truth, absolute beauty, absolute knowledge were all tantalizingly close, within his grasp. If he could only sustain his mental strength a bit longer, he would be able to lift the cursed blinders of the flesh at long last.
He was not a religious person; this was not for him a chance to commune with God. He did not, in fact, believe in God, at least not in the traditional sense. Religion, for him, was no different than all the institutions and ideas derived from the minds of men and women: it represents only an imperfect vision of a higher reality as filtered by the imperfect perceptions, conceit, self-interest and perpetual self-delusion that are the banes of humanity. He believed in Plato’s view of the soul as perfect and all-knowing before making its journey to the material world. There may not be a physical River Styx for the soul to swim across on its way to the earthly plane--a river whose waters bring forgetfulness of the absolute truth with which the soul begins its earth-bound journey--but the principle is certainly accurate: in being born we forget all that we knew when our spirits were free and existed in the plane of the true forms. Through introspection, though, we can reverse the mind numbing effects of our physical existence and recapture the glory of our preexistence. This was Tom’s lifelong quest: to regain the glory that his soul had lost in melding with the flesh—to perceive good and evil, absolute beauty, and absolute truth.
As he neared the final stage of his life-long intellectual journey, he floated like a weightless, shapeless cloud through which flowed many shadows on their trek from the realm of the forms into that of the material world. As they flowed through him, they left behind the faintest hint of their true essence, not unlike the intoxicating waft of a good perfume worn by a beautiful woman that gently suffuses itself on a bystander long moments after she has passed by.
“Chrissie,” Tom thought, or rather felt, for just a moment, but then the moment passed, and he pressed on.
Yes, he knew this path quite well. He also knew that the mental power necessary to push onward towards the final veil in this halfway place would be great indeed, and would require a colossal effort. But he was patient, and determined to utilize the last reserve of energy in his dying soul, if need be, to push onward towards the light.