16. Dreaming.

The meeting with Crocodile changed everything. Halley knew he should be resentful of the people for not coming to his aid but his emotions wouldn’t respond to the thought. What he really felt was exhilaration.

The hands that greeted him on the bank were welcoming and the smiles and laughter were of congratulations rather than derision. A coolamon of water was brought and the mud and shit washed from his legs. He stood naked amongst the crowd of naked black men who bustled round to slap his back and smile into his face.

The smiles and congratulations were genuine. The incident with Crocodile had been a wonderful entertainment but it was also an event of significance - a kind of natural initiation. The Karundi had seen for the first time evidence that Halley might be a man similar to them. There’d been a glimpse of spirit.

From a Karundi point of view, restraining Manu from going to the rescue had been an act of respect and Manu recognized it immediately.  To interfere would have diminished the experience and demeaned the man. As it was, they had stood witness while Halley had been allowed to experience the full power of the forces of life around him. The experience was beneficial - a watershed moment.

It wasn't a proper initiation.

A proper Karundi initiation was a long, drawn out affair. Until about the age of ten Karundi boys were allowed to run free with almost no discipline except for the loving guidance of the entire group. Then at the age when boys stop playing in mixed groups and want to form gangs with other boys. When they start to form strong muscles and have an excess of energy. When they become willful and rambunctious. When they’re a real humbug - that’s when the men take them to bush-camp to begin growing them up.

 Growing a boy into a man is the central element of men’s business. It’s secret, sacred and tapu. It’s a process carefully designed and monitored to take a pampered child through the transformation of a second birth. It’s carried out by a second father in stages and over years. Very little of the teaching is passed on through words. The boys are guided through a series of experiences of contrast and change by skilled guides who adapt the process to suit the child and the circumstances. It's an experience filled with drama, fear and exhilaration - and pain.

There’s no exam or certificate at the end of the procedure. The obvious scars, loss of a tooth or absence of foreskin are neither signs nor mementos of the course but simple by-products. It’s over when transformation has taken place – when a grown-up man emerges to be re-integrated into the group at a higher level. The scarifications on his chest might bear indelible witness to his experience and his new status but the real achievement is in his new awareness of his responsibility to the society and his relationship to the world.

Clearly, this level of achievement was unavailable to Halley but the Karundi could see the first step of a transition.

Normally his personal space was a perimeter of two yards but now he was in an elevated state of being. He took comfort in the sensation of skin on skin. He marveled at the warm smoky smell of the celebrating crowd pressing round him. The blue of the sky was a miracle. He lost all sense of himself in the glory of just being alive.

This euphoria, though it seemed to go on for an infinity, lasted only half an hour. In that time Halley had the distinct sensation that everything was either understood by him or understandable to him. There was nothing that he didn’t or couldn’t know. Now he saw the Karundi, not as primitive savages clinging to the margins of life but as brilliant philosophers holding the key to the central joy of existence. 

This profound omniscience was so comforting that it engendered an equally strong belief that it wasn’t the least bit important so he didn’t bother to explore it.

It was, of course, an epiphany – an insight into the divine – and within half an hour Halley abandoned it in favour of investigating the mosquito bite at the back of his left knee. He became aware of his nakedness and rushed to cover himself. After an hour he found the company of the celebrating blackmen and the mystified whitemen extremely tiresome. He retired, weary and slightly depressed, to his tent.

The sight of his gargantuan bed intensified the sense of melancholy. He saw how he must appear to others - a vapid, silly child-man. There was a sickening sense of vertigo as he realized the cheap and childish perspective that had brought him to this place and this moment – an ego-driven adventure game played out with real lives. This one single meeting with Crocodile had created a terrible problem for him. It had washed away every perspective and foundation supporting his worldview, purpose in life and sense of self. 

Rushing in to replace it came – nothing.

He was astounded that the brief flash of understanding that had smashed the façade of his own personality could be held as knowledge and accepted with equanimity by these people he’d considered savages. What made it worse was the fact that such understanding seemed to be forbidden to him.

The problem, of course, was caused by the difference in the set-up of their thinking machines.

Halley, largely because of Sir Isaac Newton (1643-1727), lived in a scientific world consisting of when, where and what – time, space and objects. These dimensions were not concepts but immutable realities - linear, mechanical and manageable.

When was in a line from yesterday to today to tomorrow.

Where was in a line from here to there.

What was in a line of priority from here and now to there and then.

The scientific world is an empirical world. It’s observed, weighed, measured and allocated relative importance.

To take a scientific approach to the world, you have to stand outside of it as a separate individual.

The Karundi thinking machine allowed for this kind of operation – this crocodile in this river at this moment – but they found this mode uncomfortable, crude and limiting. For them, the world was ever immediate and conceived in a broader context - each where existed inside of an everywhere, each when was part of an everywhen and each thing was an example of an everything.

Each one was an expression of everyone.

To conceive in this way made notions of individuality and personal ownership unnecessary and trivial. It was a form of transcendentalism minimising concepts like greed, regret, pity and shame.

To conceive in this way was very difficult unless you were born and initiated into it.

To conceive in this way was to have dreaming.