Alice Asks the Big Questions

by Laurent Gounelle

  “You’re mad.”

  “And you sort of like that.”

  He sighed and shook his head, but she could tell he was smiling slightly.

  “When we look at the world around us, we see very different things.”

  “Certainly.”

  “Well, according to Eastern religions, behind that apparent diversity there is a fundamental unity. That unity might manifest itself to us in seemingly varying forms. But to realize our true nature, it is up to us to perceive, to feel the hidden unity, and to understand that man is at one with everything and everyone.”

  “Everything and everyone? What does that mean?”

  “Every living being in the universe.”

  “All right, but it’s still a little vague to me. I am me, you are you, we are quite distinct from each other, aren’t we?”

  “We are distinct, superficially, on a certain plane of reality. And yet there might be something that links us, unites us, even if I find it difficult to believe I am somehow linked to a rude young woman who’s bothering the shit out of me.”

  “And I to believe I’m linked to a sour old man who would rather stew in his bitterness than share what he has that is precious.”

  His reply was simply to pour himself more wine without offering any to Alice, then to remain silent for a long time. Alice expected that he wouldn’t say anything more and was thinking it was time to leave when he continued, in a much calmer tone of voice:

  “You see, what is pitting us against each other right now is, in fact, our egos, that is to say, the feeling of identity we have, the feeling of self, that we are independent beings. But what we don’t know is that the feeling of existing independently of others is a kind of illusion we have on a certain conscious level. When we succeed in altering that state of consciousness, we can gain access to another reality and perceive things differently.”

  He paused for a few seconds, calmly savoring a few sips of wine before continuing.

  “Buddhists and Hindus frequently use a metaphor to illustrate the phenomenon: the wave and the ocean. If it had a brain, the wave might see itself as unique, independent, and in a certain way, that would be true: Take a wide-angle shot of the ocean and choose one wave. Look at it carefully. Out of millions of waves, there is not another like it, none with the same breadth or height or shape, none with the same ripples on its surface. It is absolutely unique. And yet that wave is inseparable from the ocean. It is part of the ocean, and the ocean is part of it. In a certain way, it is the ocean.”

  He paused. Alice kept watching him.

  He continued in a wistful tone of voice. “If I were a wave, it would probably be very pleasant, rewarding, to feel I was a unique wave, to feel I existed independently of everything else. I could be proud of being a beautiful wave. But…if I stopped clutching on to my identity as a wave, if I let it disappear, if I allowed it to die, then slowly, little by little, I would begin to feel that I was the ocean. Then I would fully become the ocean and…wow…that’s something, to be the ocean…”

  He fell silent and his words seemed to linger in the room.

  Alice took a deep breath. She was beginning to feel the impact of these ideas within her.

  “And,” she said, “if we get back to people…”

  He remained silent for another moment, then spoke in a slow, deep voice. “For religions that are not dualistic, whoever renounces his identity…realizes…that he is God.”

  His voice echoed, as if suspended in midair.

  Despite the total atheist she was, Alice felt troubled by that idea.

  “Eastern non-dualism,” he continued, carefully pronouncing each word, “is the oneness of man and of God. Man, through the process of awakening, fully becomes God.”

  He turned to look at her.

  “You understand that this is not comparable with Christianity, which would consider that idea blatantly blasphemous. Christianity is dualistic: God is seen as an all-powerful being to whom the believer speaks, whom he adores, implores, asks for forgiveness. A Christian believes that devotion will free him after death. The Buddhist, Hindu, or Taoist believes that enlightenment can free him now, during his lifetime.”

  Duvernet poured them both more wine.

  “A Christian believes in the existence of heaven and hell as real places they will go one day. Hindus know that everything is within us, everything: heaven, hell, and God. That was the great discovery revealed in the Upanishads, eight centuries before Christ.”

  “The Upanishads?”

  “The philosophical Hindu texts.”

  Alice began to feel that beyond his unpleasant, sometimes aggressive attitude, Duvernet was actually a good person. She realized that she quite liked him.

  “You just mentioned working toward enlightenment. What does that consist of?”

  “Freeing yourself from your ego.”

  “So we’re back to that.”

  “Of course! Since our normal state of consciousness doesn’t allow us to realize our divine nature, we feel a certain vagueness about who we are, and that’s painful. As I told you, we’re afraid of not existing enough, not having enough worth. And that’s why we create a reassuring false identity for ourselves: our ego. And the more we develop that false identity, the more we distance ourselves from our true nature, our divine nature. And in addition, we become unhappier: living through the ego is living in hell.”

  “I’m beginning to understand.”

  “Our ego wants us to be unique, so that it can have its own, independent existence, and to feel unique, you have to feel different. So the ego separates us from others and distances us more and more from our true nature, which tends toward the opposite: toward unity, oneness. If necessary, our ego can push some of us to opposition, conflict, division.”

  He coughed, then continued.

  “Division. Di-vision. Double vision: my ego does not want unity, it wants duality. Some people need conflict to feel they exist!”

  He smiled.

  “You see,” he continued, “the devil is also within us. It’s an internal tendency and not some external figure.”

  “The devil? Why are you talking about the devil?”

  “The devil, from the ancient Greek diabolos, is the one who divides.”

  He drank some wine and calmly continued.

  “But if the wave is separated from the ocean, it disappears, it dies for good. It didn’t know that it was the ocean.”

  Alice looked around her. The enormous vaulted wine cellar was magnificent. The stately wrought-iron wall sconces cast a yellowish light over the stone and the many oak barrels lined up in rows, creating a remarkable atmosphere. Like that of a mysterious temple.

  “People need to find the connection with their divine nature,” said Duvernet. “But they don’t know it. Even atheists need transcendence. Have you ever wondered why people keep going to movie theaters? These days, we can download all the movies we want for very little money and watch them, chilling out on the couch. So why do people still go to the movies, with someone else’s head blocking the screen, someone’s knees in their back, and the sticky popcorn from the person next to them falling onto their pants?”

  “Good question.”

  “Because a movie theater is a temple.”

  “What?”

  “People go there to feel the same emotions, the same feelings all together at the same time, to be transported together into another world. If you look at it objectively, it’s almost an experience of spiritual union.”

  Somewhat shaken by Duvernet’s words, Alice began to feel attracted by the Eastern, non-dualistic vision.

  “Several times you mentioned the states of consciousness that allow us to perceive the divine nature within us. What can help us attain the right state of consciousness?”

  “According to Eastern religions, it would be meditation. Meditation allows us to focus our minds by using techniques that vary according to different schools of thought. For example, some suggest you relax while
concentrating on your breathing, others on a certain part of the body, and others on an idea or poetic words. That leads to relaxation, to calming your restless Western mind, to channeling your attention and, little by little, through practice, understanding that you are not what you identify with, and to feeling within you a flow of consciousness. In that way, meditation can guide us toward a state that allows us to experience life without the ego for a few moments. That’s the goal of Buddhist meditation, for example. Buddha has sometimes been called anatma vadin, he who teaches the non-ego. You find other forms of meditation in all Eastern religions.”

  “A few moments without the ego…and to free yourself from it once and for all?”

  “Practice, practice, years of practice. Some would say for your whole life.”

  Alice frowned, thoughtful.

  She thought back to the parishioners in Cluny as they prayed. She realized that they too were attaining an altered state of consciousness.

  “Meditation sounds similar to Christian prayer.”

  “Except that prayer is directed to a—”

  “I know. An external God.”

  “You’re not very quick, but you end up understanding.”

  She smiled.

  “What about you: with all your knowledge of the subject, why did you let your ego ruin your life?”

  He tensed. “Why do you say that?”

  “Everyone knows what happened to you. If you started to act foolishly once you were famous and your life fell apart, it must be because success went to your head, right? And that’s your ego, isn’t it? So why? You were knowledgeable enough to understand the risks.”

  He looked away, annoyed, and remained silent for a long time.

  “Knowledge doesn’t change things much,” he said in a somber tone of voice. “There’s a great difference between intellectual knowledge and internal transformation. On this point, I’m a true Westerner: here, as soon as you have understood something on an intellectual level, whether it is in the domain of psychology or spirituality, you’re convinced the work is finished.”

  “And…you didn’t practice meditation?”

  “Do I look like the kind of guy who meditates two hours a day, sitting in the lotus position in front of a stack of three pebbles next to a pond of water lilies?”

  19

  That Monday morning, the office located high in the Montparnasse Tower was flooded with a blinding light.

  All right, thought Alice. The Hindus believe in an internal God, the Christians in an external one, and I don’t believe in any God, even if my ego really wants me to believe that the Hindus are right!

  Suddenly, she was overcome with doubt.

  What exactly had Jesus said about all that? She remembered he was asked the question but had forgotten his response. If Jesus’s vision was consistent with that of the Hindus, then everything would obviously change.

  She rushed to open her Civil Code, full of hope. It took some time to find the passage, despite the fact that she had read the Gospels at least seven or eight times by now and was beginning to know the text quite well.

  She finally found it in the Gospel of Luke, chapter 17, verse 21. Answering a question a group of Pharisees had asked, he said, “The kingdom of God is already among you.”

  Alice closed the Bible again, very disappointed.

  Too bad. In any case, she had never believed in God.

  The most important thing was her unsettling discovery: Christianity, as well as Hinduism, Buddhism, and Taoism, advocated freeing yourself from your ego. She was getting closer to the exhilarating possibility that she had caught a glimpse of a universal truth.

  She stretched out, leaning back in her chair.

  The vision of a God that lies within was the only idea that might hold her attention. How could anyone believe in an external creative force if they had gone to school or had a higher education? Adam and Eve, the Garden of Eden, they were nice stories, but really, now we knew about the Big Bang.

  She turned to her colleague, who was absorbed in his computer, as always.

  “Rachid?”

  He replied with a grunt, still staring at his screen.

  “In your file on conference speakers, you wouldn’t happen to have a physicist? Or even better, an astrophysicist?”

  He sighed.

  Alice waited a few seconds while he typed something.

  “Jacques Laborie, PhD in astrophysics, specialist in intergalactic astronomy, a researcher at the Institute of Astrophysics in Paris. Will that do?”

  “Great! How many talks has he given?”

  “Let’s see…He’s given four talks to our clients.”

  “Good, so he wouldn’t refuse to help me out for fifteen minutes! Could you arrange a brief phone call with him for me?”

  “I’m not your assistant.”

  “Please.”

  “I’ll see what I can do.”

  “You’re an angel.”

  Alice thought no more about it and concentrated on her clients’ files until lunchtime. That day, she didn’t go to the company cafeteria. She was behind in her work and was only allowing herself a quick break to grab a sandwich at her desk. She put the radio on to stream through her computer. Monty Python. Perfect for a little break and to clear her mind while eating her ham sandwich.

  “I wish to register a complaint…”

  The shrill voice of John Cleese in the sketch with Michael Palin about the dead parrot soon made her smile.

  But Alice’s mind went back to the idea of letting go of the ego. Since there seemed to be a consensus about it in many religions, even if that fact wasn’t well known, she was more and more motivated to try to—

  “What’s wrong with it?”

  —free herself from it and re-create that extraordinary state of being she had felt for a few moments in Hermès.

  It shouldn’t be too difficult for her. She didn’t feel she had a particularly strong ego, when she—

  “’E’s dead, that’s what’s wrong with it!”

  —compared herself to all the self-centered people she saw constantly around her, in her company’s management, at the gym she sometimes went to, and, of course, on TV, where an inflated ego seemed to be a requirement to be invited onto a program. Of course, the top prize went to the politicians: when it comes to ego, they take the cake.

  “Look, matey, I know a dead parrot when I see one…”

  She wanted to start right away, to take advantage of all the opportunities to practice freeing herself from her ego.

  “Hi, Alice.”

  She looked up. It was Laure, from HR. A young blonde who was always very affected and somewhat snooty.

  “Hi, Laure, how are you?”

  “He’s resting.”

  “Oh, you’re listening to Monty Python?” she said in a slightly condescending tone.

  Alice immediately picked up on the scorn in her little smile and felt ashamed. “I just turned on the radio. I don’t know what’s on.”

  “No need to make excuses,” said Laure rather pointedly. “You’re not obliged to listen to France Culture.”

  “I’m not making excuses—”

  “It’s stone dead…”

  “No! ’E’s resting!”

  “Here, I’m leaving a file for Rachid. If you could tell him when he gets back from lunch.”

  She left.

  Alice controlled her anger toward the colleague who looked down on her. Anger toward herself, who had failed so soon in her good intentions.

  She took a deep breath and tried to calm herself.

  Why was she ashamed? She was free to listen to a radio show that wasn’t intellectual. What was the problem? It had nothing to do with her status or intelligence! Everyone had the right to relax, didn’t they?

  And besides, even if that killjoy thought she was an idiot, what difference did it actually make? It wouldn’t change who she really was, so why did she feel so bad, and why had she reacted that way despite her resolution?

&n
bsp; “There, he moved!”

  She went over their exchange in her mind, as Toby Collins often advised, and ended up understanding: it wasn’t what Laure had said—which was rather neutral in the end—that prompted Alice’s ego to react but her colleague’s scornful attitude. It had been obvious in her smirk, the tone of her voice, how she raised her chin slightly. And what caused Laure to act so condescending? Her ego, of course. So it was Laure’s ego that had provoked her own!

  “No…that was you…”

  That was definitely it, she was sure of it now. Normally she had very little ego, didn’t put on airs, and identified relatively little with her roles. But the egos of other people had the power to unleash her own in a fraction of a second, when they were trying to look good at her expense, trying to put themselves above her.

  “Testing! Testing! This is your…alarm call!”

  Alice then understood that she wasn’t free. If other people’s attitudes had the power to pull her down when she was now trying to rise to a higher spiritual level, then she wasn’t free. She wanted to liberate herself from her ego, but other people’s egos were keeping her tied to her own.

  “Now look, mate, I’ve definitely ’ad enough of this. That parrot is definitely deceased.”

  She then remembered something that had happened the night before, on the way back from Cluny, in the underground parking lot of her building. She’d run into the downstairs neighbor, who was dressed up on a Sunday night as if she were going to work. Alice had just parked her dusty Renault. Wearing sneakers, she was heading for the elevator when her neighbor, wearing high heels, got out of her shiny new Mini. Alice had made an effort, with great difficulty, to be friendly, even nice. But the other woman had responded by looking Alice up and down, a superior smile on her face that clearly meant “You and I don’t belong in the same world.” Alice had a burning desire to let the neighbor know that their apartment had one more bedroom than hers and that with the value of that extra room, she could easily have bought two or three Minis and an entire Louboutin designer collection.

  She’d known for a long time that her worth had nothing to do with her possessions, that it was just her ego talking. But it was stronger than her. Her ego was like a devil locked in a box, a box that other egos could open at will, making her suffer in the process. In the end, her ego was her greatest source of suffering.