Are the Spirit and the Flesh one and the same thing? Or are they separateentities, dependent and at the same time independent of each other? Perhapssome great Cosmic Law holds this secret. But the one UniversalElement that we can depend upon, apparently, is The Lucky Accident.
A warped instant in Space—andtwo egos are separated from theirbodies and lost in a lonely abyss.
I think, therefore I am. Thatwas the first thought I had. Ofcourse not in the same symbols,but with the same meaning.
I awakened, or came alive, orcame into existence suddenly, atleast my mental consciousness did."Here am I," I thought, "butwhat am I, why am I, where amI?"
I had nothing to work withexcept pure reason. I was therebecause I was not somewhereelse. I was certain I was thereand that was the extent of myknowledge at the moment.
I looked about me—no, Ireasoned about me. I was surroundedby nothingness, by blacknothingness, a vacuum. Immensedistances away I could detectlight; or rather, I could perceivewaves of force passing around mewhich originated at points vastdistances away, vast in relationto my position in the nothingness.
There were waves of force allabout me, varying in frequency.The nothingness was alive withwaves of force, traveling paralleland tangential to each other withoutseeming to interfere one withanother. I measured them, differentiatedbetween them andfinished with the task in a matterof seconds.
How could I do it? It was oneof the capabilities I was createdwith.
What was I? I perceived thewaves of force. I perceived greatquantities of mass—solid, liquid,gas—whirling in vacuum, massbuilt up out of patterns of basicforce. I searched my own being,analyzed myself. I was not gas.I was not solid. I was not evenforce. Yet I existed. I couldreason. I was a beginning, a suddenbeginning. And I had durationbecause I knew that time hadelapsed since the moment Iawakened though I had no meansof telling how much time or ofeven naming the period.
Could I really be pure reason?Can reason exist? Can rationalentity exist without a groundworkof matter, or at least of force?
It could. It must. I was rationalentity and I existed. Yet I couldfind nothing of force, nothing tooccupy space about my self. Forall I could ascertain, I might havecovered a one-dimensional pointin eternity or I might have beenspread throughout vast distances.
From this reasoning I concludedthat rational entity mightoccur either as some force unlikethat of all natural phenomena inspace, or as some combination ofthese forces at the moment beyondmy own power to analyze,even detect. I finished with thatfor the time being.
How did I come into being? Idiscarded the question as unanswerabletemporarily. What wasI before that instant I suddenlyreasoned cogito, ergo sum? I couldnot say.
How did I know I even existed,really? Obviously because I wascapable of rational thought. Butwhat was thinking? First it wasperceiving and accepting my ownexistence; beyond that, it wasrecognizing the dark nothingnessaround me and the forces it contained.I had to exist.
But how did I know nothingnesswas right? And how did Iknow its darkness was right? Andhow did I know the waves of forcewere waves and force? And howdid I know matter was matter andthat I was none of these?
"Symbols," I reasoned. "I'mthinking in symbols. I could notreason without symbols; ther