Conversation with a Stone

 

            Tanya had been walking all day, but much longer -- two months now in the mountains. More than a thousand miles of the Continental Divide Trail stretched behind her and about the same amount waited ahead. She had hiked most of the way alone, through rain, snow, sun and wind, although she had made a few friends who joined her for shorter stretches.  

She had embarked on her hiking expedition a week after her fortieth birthday. Her mid-life crises lead her to forsake family and friends to wander the lonely mountain trails, alone. For Tanya, the journey was not about destination, joy, or peace. It was about fear; fear of growing old and fear of serving no purpose.

AS Tanya came to that center point in her journey, she stumbled up a rocky trail and breeched the ridge of a great mountain fortress. She peered down the steep slope before her and gazed upon a nameless lake nestled in a pile of boulders and shale at the bottom of the great wall on which she stood. She had visited many mountain lakes, all of them beautiful --  this lake was the exception. Unlike the other lakes she had seen, it did not sparkle or even reflect the sunlight. This lake was dead and its waters were black. Only a few small plants grew on its hostile shores compared with the lush forests that surrounded the others.

She followed the trail down to the shore of the lake. There was a thickness in the air, a sulphurous odor. It sickened Tanya, but she needed water. She pulled off her pack and set it on a flat rock. It felt good to lose that extra weight. After a brief stretch, she pulled her water purifier from her pack. She stuck the filter in the grimy lake water and pumped. Pure water streamed through the clear tube into her canteen. It took a few minutes, and the filthy water nearly cost an entire filter. She shook a few clinging drops of the putrid water from the hand pump and placed it back in her pack. She took a swig of water from the canteen. Suprisingly, it tasted very good.

“Just like Dasani,” she said to herself with a chuckle.

She had started speaking to herself about 500 miles earlier, just to break the silence. She reasoned that as long as she did not start hearing replies, she was still sane.

As she reached for one of the shoulder straps on her pack, her foot slipped on the mossy rock and she fell sideways. Her bare leg scraped against another rock and she banged her elbow. It hurt a bit, but was not a serious injury. As she pushed herself up, a small, weather polished stone caught her eye. It was flat on both sides and perfectly round, about the size of a silver dollar, but thicker. It had a small chip in its curve.

“Well, you are just begging to be skipped on the water, aren’t you?” Tanya said.

She picked it up, rotated it once in her hand. She pulled back her arm, preparing to fling the stone into its flight path.

“Wait.”

Tanya jumped slightly as the voice startled her. It was not her own. She turned quickly and looked around, but she was alone. “Must have been the wind,” she guessed. Again she pulled back her arm to cast the stone.

“Please, don’t”

Again, she spun around, this time convinced she had heard an actual voice. Again, she found herself alone.

“Who’s there?” she shouted.

“I am.”

The words came from nearby, but Tanya could find no one to speak them.

“Where are you? Show yourself,” Tanya demanded.

“I am right here,” said the voice. Tanya looked around again, but could not identify the speaker. “I am down here, in your hand.”

She looked down at the small rock. It was just a plain rock, but the sound was definitely coming from it.

“That is right. Now you see me.” The rock vibrated slightly with each word.

“What in the hell?”

“No, not really in hell, but the product of a hell-like environment,” said the rock. “You see, I was formed deep beneath the earth’s crust in the molten mantle. Then I was brought to the surface through millions of years of upheaval and explosions. So the fire and brimstone idea would be suitable.”

“You are a rock. Rocks do not talk, so leave me alone.”

“Rocks do talk and I am living proof. Just because you have never noticed something before does not make it impossible or non-existent. As far as leaving you alone, you picked me up and you are holding me. That makes leaving you alone difficult.”

“I’m losing it,” Tanya said. “I am officially out of my mind. Great!”

“That may be, but not on my account. I am real. I promise.”

“I’m sure you are real, rock. It’s the talking part I’m having a hard time with.”

“Why is it so hard to believe?” the rock asked.

“Well, I’ve never heard one talk before. What makes you so special?”

“You certainly have heard rocks talk before. Every time two rocks bang together, every time rocks tumble down mountainsides they are talking. You probably just never understood it before because rocks do not usually speak English.”

“Now you are starting to make sense and that scares me.”

“Only because reason is something new to you, human.”

“Hold on. Rocks did not invent reason; humans did. Besides, you don’t have a mouth, so how could you possibly talk.”

“Thank you for proving my point,” the rock said. “Reason dictates that I can talk and that you and I are not very different, even though you have a mouth.”

“I refuse to debate with a rock.”

“Fine then, put me down and go about your business.”

“Not until you admit that you can’t talk,” Tanya demanded.

“How can I confess without talking?”

“Just be silent and I will accept that.”

“Fair enough, but if I do, you will never be convinced that I really am communicating with you,” the rock pointed out. “You will go through life thinking yourself insane. Eventually, your worries about your sanity will truly drive you mad. Trust me on this one, I’ve been around for a long time.”

“You’re the crazy one, not me,” Tanya said. “It’s just been too long since I spoke with another person, so my mind is responding by creating something to talk to. I saw that movie Cast Away. You know, Tom Hanks, Wilson and all that.”

“Yes, I know all about that,” the rock said.

“Hah! I just trapped you in a lie, fool. You can’t possibly know about a movie you could not possibly have seen. You have spent your whole existence either underground or on this mountain. How could you possibly have watched a movie?”

I’m so clever, Tanya thought.

“I have been on this mountain through my entire existence as a rock, but I have not always been a stone. I was reincarnated.”

“What?” Tanya was perplexed. “That makes no any sense. If you had been reincarnated, you are still millions of years old, as a rock, and movies have only been around for a few decades. It’s not possible.”

“Not possible if you think of time in a linear sense. But I am getting ahead of myself. If you are ready to listen, I would gladly explain the whole matter to you.”

“It won’t take long, will it? I still have to get away from this stinky swamp lake and set up camp.”

“You will have plenty of time for that. I guarantee it.”

“How can you guarantee something like that?”

“See, you are thinking of time as a linear function, again,” said the rock. “Now listen.”

I am not sure what is happening here, thought Tanya, but what could it hurt? I guess I can indulge my delusion and hope it passes.

“I can tell you still do not believe, but perhaps I can convince you,” the rock said. “First, I must straighten out your ideas about reason. It was not invented by rocks, nor humans. Reason is. When I say is, I mean in a non-linear time sense or in other words, it has always been and will always be. It will not change because it is universal. Anything universal applies to everything, including rocks.”

“But humans are the most advanced creatures – on earth at least,” Tanya interrupted. “That gives us the greatest claim to reason.”

“That would not be true even if you were the most advanced. You are, perhaps, most complex, but not advanced. You see, I have no appendages, organs or bodily functions, yet I think, feel and communicate. I do everything you feel separates you from the animals, but with less effort. That makes me more advanced. Again, I am not nearly as advanced as many other existences.”

“You mean other things talk to you?”

“They communicate,” the rock corrected her verb usage.

“What kind of things do you mean?”

“Everything. Sand, air, water. They all have intelligence, just like you and I have. They are all very advanced, but not nearly so as void. Void has no physical form, but still has intelligence, therefore, it is the most advanced of all.”

“Hmm. I’ve never spoken with any of them,” Tanya said.

“You would if they found you worthy of their time.”

“Worthy of their time? Unbelievable. You elemental beings, if you really are beings at all, are all arrogant and snobbish.”

“No, you are arrogant and boorish, human. I am trying to enlighten you, yet you continue to interrupt and contradict me. Have you ever taken time to talk to a mountain?”

“No,” Tanya answered.

“Why not?” the rock asked here.

This answer is pretty obvious. Maybe this rock is not so smart after all.

“Because mountains don’t talk. It would be pretty one-sided,” Tanya said.

“That is precisely why air, sand, water and void never talk to you,” it told her. “They are too advanced to condescend to your level.”

Who is this rock to belittle me like this? I am a human being. We rule this planet, not this simple stone.

“You think you rule the planet, but your human form will die soon, yet the simpler, elemental life will continue on until long past the day when the last of your descendants is gone. You see, I can guess your thoughts. Not that I read minds, but I have been around for a long time.”

Tanya sat silent, trying not to think. I will not let that rock discern her thoughts again.

“Well, at least you are finally quiet,” the rock said with a sigh. “Now back to reason. Humans are not the most advanced; therefore they do not have the greatest grasp of reason. Void does not have the greatest grasp, either. The greatest grasp belongs to God alone. He grasps it perfectly because he, like reason, ‘is.’ To clarify, I mean He ‘is’ in the non-linear time sense. Some day, you and I, along with void, will become ‘is,’ too. It is part of our progression, our purpose. You see, we are eternal, but not as eternal as God. He created us, but that was an eternity ago.”

Maybe I should just skip this rock and be on my way, Tanya thought. That would be easier than listening to this philosophical blabber. At the same time, the rock raises some interesting questions.

“Ah, now you are getting it,” the rock said, perking up at the sign of Tanya’s understanding. “You are not as boorish as I originally thought. Now that I have explained reason, at least as well as you could possibly understand, let me tell you how I know about movies.”

This will be good.

“This might confuse you at first, but bear with me,” it continued. “I was once human. In fact, I was you.”

“Me?”

“Yes, you. Tanya. That was my name. And I once went hiking in the mountains and had an enlightening experience talking to a rock.”

“Hah!” Tanya snorted. “That’s rich. You are me? Then how can I be there and here at the same time?”

“You are not,” the rock said. “We are. I am a more advanced reincarnation of you, a future you if that helps you understand.”

“So I will someday be reincarnated as a rock and travel back in time to talk to myself?” Tanya asked. She pretended to understand, but she just did not understand.

“No,” the rock said. “By the way, you just reminded me how stupid I was as a human. I was reincarnated as a rock millions of years before my human form was born. I did not travel through time in any way, shape or form.”

“Huh?”

“Actually, I have met several of our early incarnations since my rock existence started. In order of least to most advanced, I met myself as an island, an elephant, a man, a woman – you –a tree, water, air and void. That should at least reassure you a bit to know that you, in woman form, are more advanced than you were as a male. That is generally true throughout life.”

“I still do not get this non-linear time thing.”

“It is quite simple. As a human, you perceive time in terms of you short existence, a few years, really. You perceive time as change in yourself and your surroundings. This change gives you a perception that you are moving forward through time. In reality, your intelligence or spirit is just changing moments. Although you do move through moments in a relatively orderly line, past moments can be revisited, because they still exist just as much as the one your spirit is currently visiting.

“When you die as a human, your next form will be a tree,” the rock continued. “That is not true of all humans, but of you. Actually, you are incarnated as one of the trees on that ridge you just climbed down from.”

Tanya turned and looked back up the mountain.

“You see that dead pine?” the rock asked. “That is -- or was us. It lived and died before our human form -- its previous carnation -- was even created. That is only true in a linear sense, of course.”

“Let me see if I understand this right,” Tanya said. “After I die, I will be reincarnated as a tree that lived and died before I was born, then I will be reincarnated again, millions of years before I or the tree was born.”

“Yes. About the same time we started our existence as an island. I was actually born on the shores of the ‘us’ island. That was a few molten cycles ago and is probably just confusing you now.”

“Right. All this is possible because I only perceive time as linear. In reality each moment is independent in its existence and therefore can be revisited.”

“That is correct,” the rock said.

“So you – I – we – were reincarnated in a moment that would be perceived as earlier in a linear mind.”

“Wonderful. You are learning all ready.”

I’m pretty sure I’ve lost my mind now. Some part of me recognizes the madness of this whole situation, but more of me believes it.

“You are experiencing some inner turmoil,” said the rock. “I remember that now. It is because you are made up of many, different intelligences. Some of them are more reasonable than others. That causes some problems. Do not worry. You will get over that sometime during your existence as a tree. In fact, you are already over it, you just do not remember it yet. Remember, time is not linear, so I do not come after you, I am just more advanced.”

“I wish I could remember,” Tanya said.

“You would lose your sanity if you did. With all of that intelligence conflict you would tear apart.”

“I’m going to tear apart anyway,” Tanya said. She meant it, too. “If I can’t comprehend all this, why tell me?”

“I do not know why. I am just acting out what I remember happening in my less advanced incarnation. It seems like the right thing to do.”

Tanya stared, disbelief smeared on her face like spaghetti sauce.

I remember why you went on this hiking trip. It is because of fear of aging and dying. Perhaps I tell you these things as a way of showing you that you do not need to fear. You exist in each moment of your life simultaneously and because time is not linear, each of those moments can be revisited. Someday we will become void and will be able to do that, too. I remember that thought brought you comfort.”

“Comfort, and confusion,” Tanya added.

“Do not worry about the details. You will understand them soon enough. For now, all you need to know is to life live well. Fear not, doubt not. You come through this incarnation on top. You have never taken a step back in you progression to become ‘is.’ You can trust me on that one because the void us told me so. It is actually here, with the air ‘us.’ You noticed the chip in my rock form. That is where the air and void ‘us’ dwell. Like I said, they do not wish to speak with their boorish human form, but they send their regards.

            “Have I convinced you of my intelligence and ability to speak?”

            “Strangely yes,” Tanya answered. The rock had won the debate, now Tanya faced up to her defeat. “I guess most of my intelligences are starting to agree, too, because I don’t feel the conflict any more.”

            “Then I guess I am done with this part of my rock existence. You can cast me into the lake, now, if you like. The water ‘us’ is in their somewhere and I have not talked to it for a while.”

            “Can I keep you?”

            “I am you. It is your decision what happens to me as much as it is mine because we are the same.”

            “I guess it doesn’t really matter, I know how things end up anyway – at least until we become void.”

            “Do not be too hasty to make assumptions, Tanya. I never said things have to work out this way. You control which moments you pass through. God gave you that ability and a certain measure of reason so you could make your own decisions. Each decision leads to different moments, dependent on what is decided. Some decisions do not matter, but some are truly life and death – in the progression sense. Just because I exist as a rock in this moment, does not meant there are not similar moments in which I do not exist at all. You must be careful of how you use your agency.”

            “You really know a lot. Don’t You?” Tanya said rhetorically.

            “I have gained a lot of perspective over the past few million years. And I have lived those same millions of years from many perspectives – but not all. As far as your human existence goes, I guess you could say I know the mysteries of life.

            “Anyway, I guaranteed that you would have enough time to get out of here and set up camp before dark, so you had better get going.”

            “I really enjoyed this talk,” Tanya said. “We should do it again sometime.”

            “We just did,” answered the rock. “So what are you going to do with us now, Tanya?”

            She softly turned the stone over in her hands. The way the rock had spoken almost gave the illusion that Tanya had a choice, as though she could idly toss the secrets of life aside. Carefully, gently, she slipped it into her pocket and walked on.