"I of my own knowledge…"

Afterword

Fifteen years ago, I was reading Lost Horizon repeatedly and thinking about Shangri-La continually. Like Alexander Woollcott so many decades earlier, I had gone “quietly mad” over James Hilton’s book, I think now because I was clinging to the thought that somewhere there existed a refuge of sanity.

In September, 1979, I began to write Messenger as a sequel. 

Why? Several reasons. (more…)

The field of economics points out that everything we do prevents us from at the same time doing something different: This law of life economics calls “opportunity costs.” If you do this, you can’t at the same time do that. Being here means you can’t at the same time be there. Despite what commercials tell you, you can’t have it all. You must “make your option, which of two.”

That very useful law occurred to me this morning in connection with the practice of following the news.

(more…)

Epilogue. 1994

If my life in the monastery hadn’t taught me about chance and accident, my return to the world would have. I could have gotten to Pakistan at any time, weather permitting. But getting home from Pakistan, without papers, without money, without a coherent story explaining how I’d arrived there, might have been a trick. As it happened, God took care of the problem. It was just a matter of timing.

Mr. Conway set a dozen monks at a time to copying out my memoir, dividing the job among them, so that the monastery would retain my story after I carried the original over the mountains. (The original, I should mention, is considerably longer than this version. Discretion, necessity, and economic constraints have all mandated that I leave out great slices of my experiences there. I particularly regret having to remove many, many of my conversations with Mr. Conway and Mr. Barnard.) Within days of that final, nighttime conference, we—three young Tibetans and I—were on our way over the mountains. (more…)

Chapter Fourteen. Messenger

“Mrs. Bolton,” Mr. Petrov said politely. “Your dream. Mr. Chiari, you will listen inside.”

By now it was night. The table we sat around was illuminated by the two oil lamps on its surface. The room’s walls and ceiling had become shadowy, indistinct. The effect was not one of gloom, but of comfort, the sort of almost luxurious comfort you feel beneath warm covers in a cold room; the comfort comes from the contrast.

In lamplight, people speak more softly, observe each other’s faces and words more carefully, penetrate into their own thought, and the thoughts of others, more deeply. At the same time, they are apt to rediscover a part of their mind they normally ignore. As they listen to what is said, some inner day‑dreamer goes off on its own quests, and the messages from both parts interact, and reinforce one another. (more…)

Chapter Thirteen. Responsibilities

Six weeks later. Early evening. Eight of us sat around a polished wooden table in one of the library alcoves. The two senior monks, Mr. Chin and Mr. Petrov; Mr. Conway; Mr. Herrick; Mr. Chang; Sunnie; Mr. Barnard, and myself. I was emphatically in the presence of my betters.

Mr. Barnard occasionally referred to Mr. Conway, humorously, as Shangri‑la’s “Executive Director,” but I had rarely seen him act in that capacity. The few incidents that disturbed our placid routine were handled in their course by a quiet word in the right place. As the high lama had promised, the burden of leadership there was light.

And never had I sat in on a meeting of the few who represented Shangri‑la’s guiding hand. They always seemed able to struggle along without my contribution, just as President Kennedy, the Air Force and General Motors always had, back when I was in the States. Besides, Shangri‑la has neither the need nor the taste for business meetings. The board of directors, or however they referred to themselves, rarely met. Or so Mr. Barnard said. Ordinarily he and Sunnie, quite as much as I, would be unneeded at any such meeting. Actually, for all I know, they met frequently, if only for the pleasure of each other’s company. (more…)

Sure, it’s going to be easy to mock. You can imagine the strange people who are going to show up to stand in reflected moonlight — there is a reason, after all, why mentally disturbed people are called loonies (luna-ies, so to speak). But I find this idea fascinating, and if the collector weren’t so far away, I’d visit. It will be interesting to see if anything comes of it. (I was amused that the author — or perhaps the editor — felt compelled to include a scientist’s statement that there was no scientific evidence of effects — of something that hasn’t yet been studied!)

Moonstruck flock to Arizona light collector
Wed Dec 5, 2007 9:12am EST

By Tim Gaynor

THREE POINTS, Arizona (Reuters) – Financial advisor Jaron Ness stands in the cool desert air waiting for the clouds to clear and the moon to rise.

As the conditions come into alignment, he steps into the path of a cool blaze of blue-white light bounced off a wall of highly polished parabolic mirrors five stories high.

“It feels magnetic,” he says, turning his hands slowly in the reflected glow of the light from the almost full moon.

The young professional from Colorado is among a growing number of curious people beating a path to this patch of scrub-strewn land out in the Arizona desert to bask in light from the world’s first moonbeam collector.

(more…)

Chapter Twelve. Adjustment

Finally he was ready to talk.

I had brought him outside and showed him the trail and offered to walk with him if he wanted. He had set out, as I’d expected, alone, without a word. I had settled onto one of the stone benches on the patio—which Mr. Barnard always called a veranda—and, after a few minutes, had taken a cigar from my pocket and lit it with a sparker, feeling a little like Mr. Barnard myself.

I had told myself, while I sat there waiting, that we had told Corbin for his own good, that waiting would have meant deceit, that ultimately this was kinder. I had told myself that this was Mr. Conway’s decision and that Mr. Conway didn’t commonly make mistakes. I had told myself that Corbin seemed to be a bright kid and would undoubtedly have figured out the situation soon enough.

But Corbin’s eyes, as I remembered them, outweighed all this logic, and I wondered if for once Mr. Conway had miscalculated. (more…)

Chapter Eleven. Isolation

“Dennis Corbin, I’d like you to meet Mr. Conway, the man in charge here. This is Mrs. Bolton. [”Sunnie,“ she interjected pleasantly.] Mr. Barnard, our only fellow American.“

Procedures at Shangri‑la are nothing if not flexible. Mr. Conway, on hearing my fast sketch of Corbin’s background, attitude, and mission, had swiftly decided that the five of us should have lunch together—presumably on the theory that no surroundings are quite so disarming as an informal meal. So it was that, within half an hour of our receiving Mr. Meister’s seal of approval on Corbin’s health, I was escorting him to one of the library alcoves that doubled, according to the occasion, as den, living room tea‑room or—as now—dining room. And so he was introduced, with no greater ceremony, to three people who would be at the center of his life for the foreseeable future. (more…)

Chapter Ten. Interrogation

I awoke early that afternoon. That is, Mr. Barnard woke me up, touching my shoulder with one hand while holding a cup of hot tea near my nose with the other. Most unusual. Then I remembered the day before, and our long night. “Did they get the engines up okay?”

“No, they didn’t. Too blamed big and heavy. But they piled three feet of rock and dirt on ‘em. Think that’s enough?”

“These days, God knows, but I suppose it’ll have to be. Just so they’re out of sight, we ought to be all right.” I remembered something from sleep, and sat up abruptly. “Say, Mr. Barnard, you know what we forgot? We ought to comb the rocks near where the wing tip hit first; there were fragments all over the place. Not so big a clue, but all it would take would be for the sun to reflect off just one piece. . . .” (more…)

Part Three. Messenger

August, 1979

Chapter Nine. Corbin

We were chanting.

Years ago, chanting used to irritate me. It had seemed a needless relic of the Middle Ages. But I’d long since changed my mind about that, as about so many things. I’d discovered its virtues.

Partly we chant for the joy of the sound; partly, for the spiritual side effects to be had by losing ourselves in a chorus. The Latin chants in particular—which I once would have found highly irritating—I now found soothing, those ancient Latin words, sung of the beauty of God and God’s world. And blended in with the sounds were the smell of the incense, the rich colors of the tapestries, and the weight of the hymnal I myself had helped to manufacture the paper for, 11 years earlier. (more…)