THE HEAVIEST THING    

 

February 16, 1977    

 

     Raminothna is the name that rang in my ears most often since I came back down the mountain. 

     Where are you, Raminothna?  Anywhere?  Everywhere?  Deep within?  Far beyond?     

     Who are you, Raminothna?  I’ve been thinking of you as my beloved immortal girl/woman who will forever be seventeen even if I live to be a hundred.  But are you really?  I don’t know, and have no conceivable way of knowing. 

     Raminothna, what are you?  I’ve been thinking of you as the ghost of my dearly beloved departed.  But are you?  For all I know, you could be just a figment of my desperate imagination, assuming that I could generate such outlandish ideas as yours.

     Raminothna, what is this “greater miracle” you would have me perform?  My gut feeling is that it’d be something beneficial, but to what end?  How much “greater” is it supposed to be?  The direction and limit I believe would be set by my ability, since I am more than ready and willing.  So, wherefore and how far?  These are the questions that have absorbed me since the “miracle worker experience”.  My only answer for now is “Time will tell.” 

     So far, Raminothna acknowledges my calls, if she does, with the perfunctory feel of a double-click on a two-way radio, as if to say, “I’m here, but will call you later.”  She has given no answers to any of my questions, but at those times she so chooses, she would speak to me.

     One thing I do that seems able to invoke her presence in my sphere of awareness is to read, since she claims to see through my eyes and think through my mind.  So, yesterday evening, I began reading the most provocative book I had brought with me: [Thus Spoke Zarathustra] by Frederick Nietzsche, who is notorious, or revered as the case may be, for his saying: “God is dead.”

     The book begins as follows:

     “I name you three metamorphoses of the spirit, how the spirit shall become a camel, and the camel a lion, and the lion at last a child.

     “There are many heavy things for the spirit, for the strong, weight-bearing spirit in which dwell respect and awe: its strength longs for the heavy, for the heaviest.

     “What is heavy? thus asks the weight-bearing spirit, thus it kneels down like the camel and wants to be well laden.

     “What is the heaviest thing, you heroes? so asks the weight-bearing spirit, that I may take it upon me and rejoice in my strength!

     What masterful writing!  Though I was also dumbfounded, as dumbfounded as the spirit who takes material form for the first time and sees in the mirror that its image is that of a camel. 

     And the first question of the camel: “What is the heaviest thing?” 

     “What indeed is the heaviest thing in this world, Raminothna, that I may take it upon me and rejoice in my strength?” 

     Her response this time was immediate.  “The heaviest thing in this world is such that once you have taken its full weight on the palm of your hands, your feet will have simultaneously risen off the ground, bearing no weight at all.”

     I was about to say, “Impossible,” but I bit my lips.  I said instead, “It seems inconsistent with the physical laws.”

     “Not at all.”

     “Let me get this right.  Once I have taken the weight of this heaviest thing on the palm of my hands, my feet will leave the ground, bearing no weight at all?  NO, this is not consistent with Newtonian mechanics at all.  What about the very first Newtonian law – action and reaction?  The next thing you’ll say is that it involves relativity.”

     “Everything involves relativity to a greater or lesser extent.”

     “Well, it simply cannot be done.”

     “‘Impossible’ again?  Therefore, again, miraculous.”

     “I give up.”

     “Within a day, you’ll find not only the answer to your question, but you will have the heaviest thing itself in the palm of your hands.”

     “And my feet will have simultaneous risen off the ground, bearing no weight at all, I suppose?”

     “Now you’re talking.”

     “I doubt it.”  But, again, she was gone.

     This morning, I did my usual exercises – stretching, push-ups, martial art forms, some yoga moves…  It was when I was doing the handstand when Raminothna spoke up again, saying, “Now, you have taken the full weight of the heaviest thing upon the palm of your hands, and you feet have indeed risen off the ground, bearing no weight at all.”

     And again, I was dumbfounded.  On my feet again on terra firma, I stuttered, “You… you mean – the planet Earth?”

     “The one and only heaviest thing in this world.”

     After awhile I said, “I wish I had your power, Raminothna.  Then I’d have no problem carrying the weight of this world.”

     “Yes,” replied Raminothna, “but then, you’d have to carry the weight of a million worlds.”