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On the same spot I sit today
Others came, in ages past, to sit.
One thousand years, still others will come.
Who is the singer, and who the listener?
—Nguyen Cong Tru

If the doors of perception were cleansed, everything would appear as it is, infinite.
—William Blake

The non-spiritual being hates evil, and is determined to eradicate that which he believes to be evil. The spiritual being knows that everything he hates and fights weakens him, and all that he is for, all that he supports, empower him.
—Wayne Dyer, Real Magic

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2. Bandy
a) Trade
b) A scarf used by bandit
c) A kind of mild liquor
d) A piece of cloth

3. Choleric
a) Irritable or angry
b) Afflicted with cholera
c) Peaceful
d) None of the above

4. Despiteous
a) A depressive stage
b) Despite of
c) Malicious
d) Pleasant

5. Etcetera
a) An ancient vase
b) A number of other things unspecified
c) A colloquium
d) An ancient passage

6. Heyday
a) At the height of
b) A slip of tongue
c) A period of great vigor or success
d) None of the above

7. Lampoon
a) To appreciate
b) Criticizing
c) A lighted spoon
d) A sharp satire directed at someone

8. Midget
a) Extremely small person
b) Extremely tall person
c) An insect
d) None of the above

9. Prurient
a) Sleazy or lustful thoughts
b) Related to pus
c) A racy book
d) Both a & c

10. Zeist
a) An old artifact
b) A city in Germany
c) A city in central Netherlands
d) None of the above

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Answers:

1. (c) 2. (a) 3. (a) 4. (c) 5 (b) 6 (c) 7 (d) 8 (a) 9. (a) 10 (c)

Your Score:
8-10 Excellent
5-7 Good
1-4 Need improvement

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That was Nietzsche speaking at the height of his toxic dislike of Jesus. One wonders why he was so dead against this person, the one who never preached anything to spark such dislike. Come to think of it why was Nietzsche so irked with him?

This has to be understood in the context of human history and its behavior. Whether it was Buddha or Jesus, they all faced social ire from incumbent powers. They were ridiculed, ostracized and even in some instances dismembered or burnt on stake. Mansoor was mercilessly dismembered and then burnt for saying “I am God”.

History is replete with examples where godly people were held in contempt or murdered while the ungodly and greedy were eulogized or even glorified. Tombs were erected in their memory and they live in our history books. Alexander the so-called Great who massacred millions of innocents trying to quench his greed for power is proudly mentioned and babbled about while the proponent or practitioners of loving kindness and humane approach to life are seen with an evil eye. Unfortunately, this is not limited to a bygone era. Such parochialism and unjustified cynicism is alive and kicking in the modern so-called scientifically-oriented world. It seems that the so-called intellectuals fall short of exercising intelligence while perceiving or judging others who do not share their thread of thinking and doing.

To quote a modern example, not an extreme one, Nature magazine recently carried the news of neuroscientists petitioning that the speech of Dalai Lama be cancelled in one of the scientific conferences. Why is it that scientists who pride themselves for carrying the tradition of rational thinking would act so irrationally? What damage did Dalai Lama do to neuroscience? What are scientists really afraid of? Is his one talk capable of shaking the foundation of neuroscience? If so, then we should be aware that it is not founded on solid principles. Otherwise, they have nothing to fear.

Before we go further, a bit about philosophy. We know that it is a mental exercise and rationalism at its height. But there is the hitch. Logical thinking is fine, but when it is based only on assumptions, that is when it becomes problematic. Assumptions are assumptions and even if they can be replicated through scientifically-valid double-blind experiments, they still remain in the realm of speculation. Perhaps that is why so many so-called ground-breaking discoveries keep getting overturned as we progress.

Odd as it may sound, that is how science works. That is also one reason why our understanding about things keeps on changing. It all depends upon our rational thinking in the context of the current body of knowledge. If we recall, scientists at one time scoffed at the idea that brain cells could even regenerate!

It also should be kept in mind that there is nothing wrong with rational thinking, provided it recognizes its limitations. In fact it is a very powerful tool and helps us to analyze facts and figures of a given phenomenon. But this manner of thinking is not foolproof. In the last few centuries, emboldened by this method’s success and workability, scientists and philosophers have taken the air of know-all arrogance. They are veering toward dangerous assumptions that if something cannot be ‘thought out’ or rationalized it should be relegated to the corridors of heresy. However, here they go too far without realizing that even their own thinking process and method of enquiry is based on ‘very little’ knowledge. For example, neuroscientists know only around less than 5 percent about how the brain functions and the whole enterprise of neurosciences; its prized theories and therapeutic possibilities are based on very little knowledge. Is it not simply delusional to disregard all other possibilities on the basis of this little knowledge?

If we go down the history lane, we will notice that nothing much has changed since the time of Nietzsche. We have not become more intelligent and our capacity for tolerance has not increased in the real sense of the term. Nietzsche’s dislike was fostered by mental thinking on the basis of ‘what he knew’ at that time; he might have thought about all the things Jesus might be saying and could not make sense of it—or did not want to make sense because he was so blinded by biases and prejudices (an antithesis of rational thinking). He might be operating out of certain scholastic assumptions or logical rules and those rules could not accommodate the wholistic thinking of Jesus. Also, how can mind comprehend something which lies beyond its own capacity?

More so, Nietzsche was not unique in his despise for Jesus. Throughout history humans have repeated this folly in one form or the other. Think of modern times and you will find plenty of examples where the so-called high-heeled scientists have pilloried others whose meritorious ideas and opinions did not match their own. Another thing to be understood here is that philosophers and scientists employ almost similar mental strategies to manufacture hypotheses and derive conclusions. The only major difference is that empirical scientists go one step further in testing their assumptions by designing experiments. Science is an operationalized philosophy but still dependent upon logical premising and given to the same flaws (though in lesser degree) as philosophy.

When we anthropomorphize godliness, we think about it in the terms of other objects, like you or me and stones. Thus it becomes the victim of our cerebral parochialism. That might have also happened with Nietzsche.

Certainly, reasoning did not deliver Nietzsche the truth. As history unequivocally shows, physical living and dying exist only in realm of thinking. Otherwise, existence appears to be a seamless interplay of infinite possibilities similar to subatomic particles flitting in and out of existence in quantum field every moment.

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Born and raised in Toronto, Hannah’s journey to Jerusalem entails spending nine months in an orthodox yeshiva, learning Torah and gaining a deep understanding of Jewish rituals and customs, something about which her family has not been so fussy. Raymond, on the other hand is in University working on his doctoral thesis which is based on Robert Burton’s opus The Anatomy of Melancholy. Separated geographically now, they find it hard to forget each other but thanks to e-mails, the romance continues and bridges the distance. What had started of as mere physical lust, now takes the shape of spiritual longing. Raymond mopes as he goes to the airport to see Hannah off: “Highways are built for silence. Lovers are built for crying. . .”

In Jerusalem, while Hannah struggles to understand her Jewish identity by studying and “being”(hence experiencing) in Jerusalem, Raymond, the blond blue eyed WASP pines in Toronto, not really writing his dissertation but just wanting to do so. Their e-mails give us a glimpse of their individualities, pursuits as well as growth as human beings. While Hannah makes new friends and promises Raymond that their togetherness is not too far, Raymond finds it extremely difficult to combat loneliness and carnal desire. Irresistibly drawn to each other, they make plans that Raymond could visit Jerusalem. His tickets are booked but the date still is too far. What of the days in-between? Young and full of passion, they soon find themselves on the crossroads, as Raymond gives in to physical desire and cheats on her. Hannah, on the other hand relentlessly moving on to be a true Jew contemplates marrying “only” a Jew. She thus tells Raymond: “I’m thinking of my future, and I want Jewish fucking babies, a husband who understands Torah and, say, the Holocaust.”

But still, neither of them can tolerate each others’ absence and they finally meet in Jerusalem to discuss and sort out the tangles of their emotional threads. Unfortunately, the more they try to disentangle, they end up pulling it hard to form knots which refuse to loosen. Much as Raymond regrets having slept with another woman and makes it very clear that it is Hannah he cares more about, it does not convince her. The fact remains that he has been a betrayer and more than that he is not a Jew. The former still would have convinced Raymond but the latter? Can human beings not grow out of these petty issues? He finds it disgusting. Even birds seem to have transcended this fundamentalist crap. Marche elucidates: “The pigeons fly into Jerusalem from Hebron, from Beirut, from the Golan, from Gaza, from Tel Aviv, from Cairo. They can’t tell the difference. They do not even have the intelligence to revere the holy places and the fences between them. . . They cross east to west, west to east; their judgment is indifferent: they shit on the heads of Jews, Muslims and Christians, Greeks, Arabs and Armenians.” Perhaps they shit because their heads are its rightful abode—full of shit and garbage.

And Jerusalem? What significance does it have? They say it is the city of God, but for the rational Raymond it does not mean much. Thus he deliberates: “Think about it: cities are constantly raised in height by the dust that covers them. Walls, stone by stone, whimper to emptiness. There is always a packet of remnants under the dirt, some record for the archaeologists. Walls keep being built, keep crumbling, keep remaining. Eventually the whole world will be remnants.”

We are passé the culture of expatriates who were still fresh from their countries and carried the whole package of their traditions and culture along to the west and hung on to it; so many generations away from the migrant culture, it seems good enough and commendable to go back and dig out one’s roots, (on Hannah’s part) but walking out of a relationship because of this, is not even convincing enough on fanatic grounds. The fascination with one’s roots is always alluring and will always be, no matter how far traveled generation we are from our original ancestors. We still want to be defined and Hannah devours everything Jewish—the Shabbat (its different matter that she cannot stick to all the rules), havruta, Yom Kippur or the disciplinarian lifestyle in general, until finally she considers marrying only a Jew. She derives great pleasure from the peculiarity of the landscape of Israel which for her becomes sacramental, be it the Dome of the Rock, the Sepulchre or the Wall. Going back to one’s country for the first time is still very shocking and Raymond voices, ”I read somewhere that culture shock’s more severe coming home than going away.” But for Hannah, “Even with all these troubles, Jerusalem est magnifique.”

The novel largely can be seen as a dichotomy, torn between various polarities. Raymond versus Hannah, Man versus Woman, West versus East, Toronto versus Jerusalem, New versus Old, Gentile versus Jew or even Self versus Other. And antinomies can never be resolved, which strangely always appeals to a reader. Raymond himself says in one of his letters: “I’m sacrilege where you live, that’s fascinating”. The fact remains that Hannah might be deeply attached to her religion, which is her present, yet her education and experiences, her past in the west make it impossible for her to ignore Toronto. Thus she frets: “Oh, and everyone here is rude. They treat you like family, that frank and that presumptuous, which is less charming than it sounds.” Her life is inextricably bound with learning Torah and the English novels of Graham Greene. She muses at one point: “These people are not my people though they are my people, and when I reach I cannot ever know what I will touch. That’s the thing. To be pacing comfortably, with no bag over my shoulder and fancy shoes on my feet, across College Street, Bloor or even Yonge Street, or. . .” She can never be truly defined. Doomed to be hyphenated. In-between, betwixed. Canada-born-non-resident-Israelite-Jew??

We would never know what became of Raymond and Hannah. Or of all the tensions in the book. But they sure do illuminate. Art does not propose to be instrumental or effective. In the gap between what is going to happen and whatever we would wish to happen, it grips our attention for a space where our power to focus is focused back on ourselves. All illuminations are fleeting. Marche rightly observes: “The first is that there is no end to debate and that solving the problem, coming to a conclusion, arriving at a certainty, should not be your goals. Those goals are antithetical to this undertaking.” These are the goals which the author must negotiate so that he is always in the condition of transcending or mortifying fact, implying that the mind can never be wholly at home in a world which has shown itself disagreeable to desire itself.

In a startling debut, Stephen Marche, Canadian and only twenty seven, offers a rare type of novel which combines epistolary technique to the DIN, the sidebar notations almost like marginalia, which undoubtedly give a kick to the narration and thrills the reader. Shortlisted for the 2002 O. Henry Prize, it is evident that young writers are doing it very well and it is going to be really tough for any competent writer in the coming future.

For the moment Raymond and Hannah—a sweeping must-read!

Raymond and Hannah
By Stephen Marche
| Doubleday Canada |
| Hardcover, 224 pages | January 2005
| $25.00 | ISBN: 0-385-66041-3 |
This book is also available as trade paperback.

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