Visibility

In one of Carlos Castaneda’s books about Don Juan, the wise shaman, these two are on their way home from a long outing. As I recall it Castaneda is obsessing again (he is always obsessing about something). The subject I think is “touch the world lightly—and then be gone.” Ahead is a curving rise with brushwork and trees at its top. Castaneda says to Don Juan: “Fine, Don Juan. But supposing that you had an enemy hiding up there, in that brush up there, with a rifle, intent on killing you. How could you avoid that?” Don Juan then delivers one of his ambiguous but charged responses. “I just wouldn’t be going that way,” he says.

Let’s take an analogous teaching from Matthew 10:16. “Look, I send you out like sheep among wolves; be wary as serpents, innocent as doves.” Different translations use different adjectives. Serpents are sometimes prudent, shrewd, or wise. The doves are sometimes guileless, sometimes harmless. It is certainly shrewd to avoid visibility and wise to avoid harming others.

Then there is that quote I cited from Abdul Qasim Gurgani a while back. Asked about his humility by his disciples, he said: “My humility isn’t there to impress you. It is there for its own reason.”

This cluster suggests how to be “in the world but not of it,” the manner and behavior of the wise in the fallen world. Why wouldn’t Don Juan be going that way? Is that because he is all knowing and knows that somebody is hiding on that rise? He doesn’t say that. If we are lucky—but luck is not a mere matter of chance—we are avoiding all manner of grievous harm not because we knowingly avoid it but because our state renders us immune; something guides us. What we are avoiding is unknown to us; if we knew it, we’d turn proud—and soon bad things would start to sprout all over. The sheep Jesus sends among the wolves become invisible. They are wise as serpents; they stay camouflaged. The doves are harmless and do not invite aggression—besides, they can “detach” from the world in flight. Touch the world lightly and then be gone. Humility is a method; it protects us from the harm of pride within.

There is a Sufi story which points to the flipside. Some rats who’d lived for countless generations in a backward, arid region discovered a kind of herb that made them grow larger. This appealed to the rats who’d always thought themselves disadvantaged by size. They began to cultivate the herb and to consume it in massive doses. Within three generations, they were as large as wild pigs. Having thus become visible, humans noticed them and promptly began to hunt them for their meat.