What is Life?

Mortonson Relates that while he was out strolling in the foothills of the Himalayas one day, a tremendous voice that seemed to come from everywhere and nowhere said to him, "Hey, you."

"Me?" Mortonson asked.

"Yes, you," the voice boomed. "Can you tell me, what is life?"

Mortonson stood, frozen in mid-stride, pouring perspiration, aware that he was having a genuine mystical experience and that a lot was going to depend on how he answered the question.

"I'm going to need a moment or two for this one," he said.

"Don't take too long," said the voice, reverberating hugely from all sides.

Mortonson sat down on a rock and considered the situation. The god or demon who had asked the question surely knew that (concluded on page 225)What is Life?(continued from page 165) Mortonson--a mere mortal and not too fantastic a specimen, at that--hadn't the faintest idea of what life was. So his answer should perhaps reveal his understanding of his own mortal limitations but also show his awareness that it was somehow appropriate for the god or demon to ask this question of a potentially divine creature like man, here represented by Mortonson with his stooped shoulders, sunburned nose, orange rucksack and crumpled pack of Marlboros. On the other hand, maybe the implication of the question was that Mortonson himself really did know what life was and could spontaneously state it in a few well-chosen words. But it was already a bit late for spontaneous wisdom.

"I'll be right with you," Mortonson said.

"OK," said the tremendous voice, booming off the mountains and rolling through the valleys.

It was really a drag to be put on the line like this spiritually. And it wasn't fair. After all, Mortonson hadn't come to Nepal as a pilgrim, he was only here on a 30-day excursion. He was simply a young American with a sunburned nose chain-smoking Marlboros on a hillside in Nepal, where he had come through a combination of restlessness and an unexpected birthday gift of $500 from his parents. So what could you infer from that, contextwise? "Raw American Encounters Immemorial Eastern Wisdom and Fails Miserably to Get with It." A bummer!

Nobody likes to be put on the spot like that. It's embarrassing and potentially ego damaging to have this vast odierworldly voice come at you with what has to be a trick question. How do you handle it? Avoid the trap, expose the double bind, reveal your knowledge of the metagame by playing it in a spirit of frivolity! Tell the voice: Life is a voice asking a man what life is! And then roar with cosmic laughter.

But to bring that off, you need to be sure that the voice understands the levels of your answer. What if it says, "Yeah, that's what's happening, but what is life}" And you're left standing there with ectoplasmic egg on your face as that cosmic laughter is directed at you--great gusty, heroic laughter at your pomposity, your complacency, your arrogance at even attempting to answer the unanswerable.

"How's it coming?" the voice asked.

"I'm still working on it," Mortonson said.

Obviously, this was one of those spiritual quickies, and Mortonson was still stalling around and hadn't even gotten around yet to considering what in hell life was. Quickly, he reviewed some possibilities: Life is a warm Puppy. Life is Asymmetry. Life is Chance. Life is Chaos shot through with Fatality (remember that one). Life is just a Bowl of Cherries. Life is Birdcall and Windsong (nice). Life is What you make it. Life is Cosmic Dance. Life is a Movie. Life is Matter become curious (did Victor Hugo say that?). Life is Whatever die hell you want to call it.

"This is really a tough one," Mortonson said.

"That's for sure," the voice said, rolling from peak to peak and filling the air with its presence.

One should always be prepared for this kind of spiritual emergency, Mortonson thought. Why didn't NYU have a course in Normative Attitudes Toward the Unexpected? But college never prepared you for anything important, you just went along learning a little here and there, picking up on Chuang-tzu, Thoreau, Norman Brown, Rajneesh, the Shivapuri Baba and the other insiders who really knew the score. And all their stuff sounded absolutely right on! But when you closed the book, that was the end of it, and there you were, scratching your nose and wishing that someone would invite you to a party where you'd meet a beautiful childlike young woman with long straight hair and upright pointy breasts and long slender legs, but now was no time to get into that, because that damned voice was waiting for the answer, the Big Answer, but what in almighty hell was life}

"I've almost got it," he said.

What bugged him was die knowledge that he had a lot to gain if he could only come up with the right answer. It was an incredible chance for spiritual advancement, an opportunity to skip a few intermediate steps and get right up to Enlightenment, Moksha, Satori! A really together person could solve this and parlay the ensuing insight into guruhood, maybe even into Buddhadom! You could spend a lifetime going to Esalen or a Gurdjieff group and never get near anything like this! But what was life?

Mortonson ground out his cigarette and saw that it was his last. No more until he got back to his pension. Christ! He had to get on with this Life is Hesitation? Desire? Longing? Sorrow? Preparation? Fruition? Coming togedier? Moving apart?

Mortonson rubbed his forehead and said in a loud but somewhat shaky voice, "Life is Conflagration!"

There was an uncanny silence. After what he judged was a proper discretionary wait, Mortonson asked, "Uh, was that right?"

"I'm trying it out," the noble and tremendous voice boomed. "Conflagration is too long. Blaze? Fire! Life is Fire! That fits!"

"Fire is what I meant," Mortonson said.

"You really helped me out," the voice said. "I was stuck on that one. Now maybe you can help me with seventy-eight across. I need to know die middle name of the inventor of the frictionless star drive. It's on the tip of my tongue, but I can't quite get it. The third letter is D."

Mortonson had been prepared for some freaky revelations, but playing Cosmic Crosswords was not his idea of where anything was at, spiritually speaking. He just couldn't relate to it, even though it was definitely an extraordinary experience.

He relates that he thereupon turned and walked away from the voice and the higher mysteries and returned to his pension in Katmandu. Now he has gone back to his job as expediter in his father's gristle-processing plant in Skow-hegan, and he takes his vacations in Majorca.