A choice between knowledge and balance...

       Albert Einstein once said that “the most important human endeavor is the striving for morality in our actions. Our inner balance and even our very existence depend on it. Only morality in our actions can give beauty and dignity to life.” I grew up in a tolerant but moral family base; I was free to believe what I wanted but my actions spoke louder than my words. My parents didn’t attend church but they still found a way to instill moral beliefs and attitudes in me, which have helped guide my decisions. Some people are not so lucky; they are forced to believe what has been taught to them, or they have no strong positive guidance. This causes an inner struggle within ourselves; who are we? What guides us? Is there a higher power? Does the supernatural affect us? Can we infer and draw meanings on past events? All these questions were haunting Eliot Crane, a character in “The Harmony of Spheres” which was written by Salman Rushdie’s in his novel of satires, “East, West”. Eliot is a distraught man, taunted by the powers of the supernatural and unknowns of the past. His mix in the spiritual world and his choices in the human world have pushed his schizophrenia over the edge. In search of a revelation he finds the ultimate ending, death.

Eliot was doing what everyone does to a certain extent, question what everything is about, from our existence to magic, only that his passions for such beliefs became too much for him to handle. He couldn’t except that we will never for sure, until our dying day, what is truth and what is legend. And even then questions will remain unanswered. His interest in occult, which is the knowledge of the hidden spurred Eliot’s interest in hell and Satan and the evil that posses both those and him. His best friend and also evading Martian, Khan, said “his immersion in the dark arts was more than merely scholarly” but his brilliance hid the suffering. He considered himself open minded and his insight on the dark arts was explained by his artistic explorative mind. But the knowledge he gained about the supernatural and the occult pushed his mind into a fantasy. His schizophrenia mixed with his interests is causing him to deteriorate. He is losing the balance between what is real and what is part of his disease.

The hallucinations and ideological beliefs cause him to push people away. His friend, who mentions that they are complete opposites, balances that part of his life that is real. “Who knows what makes people friends? Something in the way they move. The way they sing off key”; our friends balance us. His friend has listened and watched him go through fantasies and delusions; he has watched the healthy half of Eliot get sucked in by his hidden flight of the imagination. Khan’s wife, who was a doctors and a hard core believer in science was also part of Eliot’s balance. Unbeknownst to his best friend, Eliot had been with Mala, she was part of his balancing act. Her scientific mind was stretched by Eliot’s artistic appeal. There was nothing Khan could do but make sure that he too did not over question the mysteries of life; Eliot had taught him about the four trances of Japanese spiritualism: ecstasy, a coma, a hypnotic state, and the soul leaving the body and entering the World of Mystery. Eliot’s passionate beliefs in mysterious, combined with the psychotic state of schizophrenia were too much for him to balance. He knew that he was sick and that his mental health was in jeopardy, but to him it was just a chemical imbalance, part of who he is.

Khan’s suggestion of harmony stems from knowledge between all societies. We all have our mysteries; and the disagreements between them cause imbalance in our world. We need to understand that our situations should not pit us against each other, but instead we should unify the mysteries, understand that we are not going to believe all the same things and except that someone else could be right; then together we can have balance and harmony in a society. I keep balance in my life in the activities I choose to participate in (school, work & play) and in the people that I choose to be around (friends, family, co-workers). I keep inner balance by educating myself and accepting that I will not, nor anyone for that matter, will ever have all the answers. “Happiness is when what you think, what you say, and what you do are in harmony.” -Gandhi