Hermit, The

I, the author, state that this book is absolutely true. Some people who are bogged down in materialism may prefer to consider it as fiction. The choice is yours --believe or disbelieve according to your state of evolution. I am NOT prepared to discuss the matter or to answer questions about it. This book, and ALL my books, are TRUE!

Excerpt:

Outside the sun was shining. Vividly it illumined the trees, threw black shadows behind the jutting rocks, and sent a myriad glinting points from the blue, blue lake. Here, though, in the cool recesses of the old hermit's cave, the light was filtered by overhanging fronds and came greenly, soothingly, to tired eyes strained by exposure to the glaring sun.

The young man bowed respectfully to the thin hermit sitting erect on a time-smoothed boulder. 'I have come to you for instruction, Venerable One,' he said in a low voice. 'Be seated,' commanded the elder. The young monk in the brick-red robe bowed again and sat cross-legged on the hard-packed earth a few feet from his senior.

The old hermit kept silent, seemingly gazing into an infinity of pasts through eyeless sockets. Long, long years before, as a young lama, he had been set upon by Chinese officials in Lhasa and cruelly blinded for not revealing State secrets which he did not possess. Tortured, maimed and blinded, he had wandered embittered and disillusioned away from the city. Moving by night he walked on, almost insane with pain and shock he avoided human company. Thinking, always thinking.

Climbing ever upwards, living on the sparse grass or any herbs he could find, led to water for drinking by the tinkle of mountain streams, he kept a tenuous hold on the spark of life. Slowly his worst hurts healed, his eyeless sockets no longer dripped. But ever he climbed upwards, away from mankind which tortured insanely and without reason. The air became thin. No longer were there tree branches which could be peeled and eaten for food. No longer could he just reach out and pluck grasses. Now he had to crawl on hands and knees, reeling, stretching, hoping to get enough to stave off the worst pangs of starvation.

The air became colder, the bite of the wind keener, but still he plodded on, upwards, ever upwards as if driven by some inner compulsion. Weeks before, at the outset of his journey, he had found a stout branch which he had used as a stave with which to pick his path. Now, his questing stick struck solidly against a barrier and his probing could find no way through it.

The young monk looked intently at the old man. No sign of movement. Was he all right, the young man wondered, and then consoled himself with the thought that the 'Ancient Venerables' lived in the world of the past and never hurried for anyone. He gazed curiously around the bare cave. Bare indeed it was. At one side a yellowed pile of straw -- his bed. Close to it a bowl. Over a projecting finger of rock a tattered saffron robe drooped mournfully as if Conscious of its sun-bleached state. And nothing more. Nothing.

The ancient man reflected on his past, thought of the pain of being tortured, maimed, and blinded. When HE was as young as the young man sitting before him. In a frenzy of frustration his staff struck out at the strange barrier before him. Vainly he strove to see through eyeless sockets. At last, exhausted by the intensity of his emotions, he collapsed at the foot of the mysterious barrier. The thin air seeped through his solitary garment, slowly robbing the starved body of heat and life.