The Great Body

No heart, no blood, no bones or skin, and no face. He was a boy and not a boy. A part of the world without being of the world. He had friends.
The wind and the sky. Trees and birds. The ocean. And he believed that was all there was to know, and his idea of the world was formed by the sounds of water. He knew the world through invisible eyes. Eyes no living creature could see.
One day, while looking intently at a sparrow, he saw the little bird look at him and fly away, startled. And he looked down and had a body. Skin and bones, but no heart, no blood, and no face.
He was suddenly aware of how cold the wind was. He looked at the ocean and said to himself that it was too wet. The trees were rough to him and the birds too jittery. He built himself a house made of skin and through the windows of that house he watched the world move.
He felt everything and it was so much movement within him that one morning he found his skin had pinched and opened and he had a face. He walked to the ocean and looked at his reflection in the water. It was a face full of sorrow and hope. It was a face untouched by the world, one he had brought into being.
With his new eyes, he saw all the people and the way they moved. And he said to himself that he would like to be like those people. So he tried. And he failed. And he tried again, until one day he found he had blood moving through him. Behind his eyes the blood moved back and forth and directed him to look at the women in his town. Soon he said to himself that he was in love and lived with his wife in a house of blood and eyes. It was looking through the windows of this house and coming to conclusions about life that he made his decisions, his plans for the future. He organized what was important in his mind and began putting his ideas into motion.
And his blood worked so hard that one day he had a heart. All that was important before no longer had any meaning. The words he used were echoes and in his body he felt as if life was breathing into him.
He said to himself that he had found the ultimate truth, and that it was love. He believed himself a bringer of good news, and walked out into the world. And he never felt the distance between himself and his friends, his fellow men. Because he had new priorities. He had new plans.
But one day his wife died and he did not weep. Realizing why he did not weep, tears came to his eyes, and for a moment he felt something in his heart that made him jump. He wondered what it was and began to feel scared. He knew then that his entire life his heart had not been beating. It accepted blood and sent out blood, but it did not beat.
He concentrated, but his heart would not beat again. But one day he fell in love and he knew what he had been looking for. Someone to understand him. He married again and felt loved, and one day he kissed his wife and his heart began to beat. It never stopped.
But years went by and the distance between himself and everyone else grew more pronounced so that whenever he talked with a friend, it was like skipping words across a canyon. He fell into despair and even his love was of little help.
He had lived with his skin and his face and his blood for a long time. And even his heart had been with him through strange things. But he knew that everything he had experienced was incomplete. His life had been a preparation, an instruction in abstract ideas, using thoughts that were simple to grasp.
So one autumn morning, when he felt something that was not skin and not blood but outside of it, something beyond a kiss and beyond even love, he let himself be taken into it. It was something that surrounded the world, but was not of it, he thought, and those words sounded familiar. So that autumn morning, he was changed not physically, but in some deeper manner. His mind was different and his very state of existence had changed. He knew that when he walked out into the world, the distance that had always been between himself and others would be gone.
So, taking his time and allowing himself to think about his life, his trials and transformations, he dressed. He thought about the heart, and how it was a symbol for something greater -- Love. And he knew that even his skin and his bones were only rudimentary versions of something greater, something that was not physical.
He walked out into the world and he not only felt that the distance had disappeared, but he saw that he was his neighbor and his wife and his enemies. Like hearts sent out blood, they all were sending out a more advanced form of blood that could not be seen. And through this they were connected. They were one.
In the gray autumn morning his arms grew transparent, and his legs and face and body. Soon he was only nerves and blood and a beating heart. And then those too disappeared, and he was the invisible beating heart. The one who had once been without a body once more fell away from it and became the Great Body.