The Toltec Art of Life and Death

“You may see that there are greater things to battle than death.”

Sarita looked at her son as if seeking comprehension. He met her look, and she felt more confusion than comfort. Looking quickly away, she reached for the nylon bag and shook it. There was something left at the bottom. Grabbing it, she brought it out with a shrug and a sigh. It was his childhood plastic figure of Popeye, pipe in mouth and both biceps bulging. This she had found in his dresser drawer.

“Now we can talk!” exclaimed her son, laughing. “I am what I am!”

Sarita smiled with satisfaction. The meaning of this silly item eluded her, but she had been right to suspect that it would please him. She withdrew her withered hands and tugged on her cotton gown nervously. What else? Feeling around for a pocket, she withdrew a necklace: a silver chain holding a star of David. This she hung from a leafy twig, and gave it a spin. Then she took the gold crucifix from around her neck and draped it over the same twig. The two charms spun and gleamed in the surreal light, sending little sparks of fire into the upper branches of the tree. “Old gods, young gods. How are they different?” she whispered.

“Why bother with gods at all?” her son asked. “Why call on the saints and the ancestors? Why bring any of them to a conference between mother and son?”

“Because we need help.”

“You need faith—but not in them.”

“Then . . . in what?”

“Is it possible you’re asking me this?”

“I have great faith in you, my lamb.”

“Not in me. Faith in you. It’s what brought you here, guided you to me. Faith is life itself, breathing through matter and moving us both.”

“You are not moving at all.”

“Am I not? Haven’t I been moved already?” He gave his mother a look of resignation, shaking his head. What more could he tell her?

“M’ijo,” his mother said softly, clearly. “I will have you return to me, or I will die trying.”

Yes, I see that, he reflected. Now, however, she was alive. Life still pushed through her, invigorating an old body with an unmistakable will. If she were to revitalize him, she would need that will to become even stronger, for he had slipped past her emotional reach. She would need total faith, which could come only from an awareness that presently eluded her. Yes, even Mother Sarita, sage and healer, had revelations waiting . . . and a journey ahead of her, too long postponed.

“You will not die today, Sarita,” he stated at last. “Nor, apparently, will I.”

He must take this chance to attend to her. His mother had always been ready to fight for him. She had always defended his right to be who he was and to achieve what he wanted. This time she was defending his right to live. As he saw the light come back into his mother’s face, the face that had graced him over the years with a thousand expressions of love and pride, his imagination was set alight. He would give Sarita a mission, if she felt she needed one, and give the warrior one last battle to fight. While he still could, he would set her on a journey far more important than its intended destination.

“You say you will do anything?” her son asked.

“Yes!”

“Even if it means following instructions?”

Sarita could feel her heart beat faster. “My angel, in this peculiar world, you are the teacher,” she said. “I will gladly take your instructions.”

Okay, now who was teasing whom? Miguel thought wryly. Even a dying man had to laugh. And he was surely dying . . . the process had begun. He could see that Sarita had come to him as an impassioned force of life; and in a dream made of memory and waning desires, only life could stop that process.

“Not my instructions, Madre,” he said, his smile brimming with love. “In my peculiar world, the outcome makes no difference. In someone else’s world it is everything.” He looked past her, to something in the distance.

“What do you—” she began. “Someone else?”

Sarita’s eyes followed his gaze to a point along the far horizon. “What is this?” she asked. “Another tree?”

Far from this gleaming place they occupied, on another hill in a similar landscape, loomed an enormous tree. She hadn’t noticed it until this moment. It was in every way the same as this one, the one that held her son on its noble branches. It was . . .

“A copy,” he informed her.

“And who sits there? A copy of my son?”

“An impostor of another kind. The one who lives in that tree knows the science of illusion. Speak to that one, Mother.”

Sarita looked across desolation to the tree in the distance. It was obscured by shadow, but radiant with color, as this one was. Nothing moved, however. Its leaves did not flutter, and nothing shone. Shadows did not play with flickering rays of light. There seemed to be no living thing among its branches. She was mesmerized. It took a deliberate act of will to look away and return her attention to her son, there in his Tree of Life, where he sat silhouetted against the brilliant colors of Earth.

“It is not more illusion I want. It is Miguel.”

“Your journey begins there, Sarita,” Miguel advised, taking another glance at the tree in the distance. Everything perceived was reflection, illusion. She would now have the chance to make her choices based on that awareness. “If you must know how to bring back your son, there lies your first instruction. As always, believe nothing you hear, but listen.”

He plucked another apple from the branch above him and began polishing it on the hem of his hospital gown. He took a hearty bite, and as he began to chew, sweet juice streaming down his chin, he lifted his eyes to the black sky and grinned with profound delight at the vision of a planet blazing with dreams. His mother would prove herself adept, he had no doubt. Her awareness would grow with every challenge. She would put her considerable wisdom to use and consult the ancestors, as she always had. She would deal with the one who rules the world of reflections—a world he had left far behind—and, for a while at least, she would forget the pain that springs from a mother’s intolerable fear. He winked at her cheerfully and readied himself to follow life, wherever it led.

Sarita smiled back, confident now as she felt the power of her intent moving time and circumstance forward. She must stay in her son’s dream, no matter what. Here, she could persuade him. Here, he would feel the force of her will. In her mind, she had made her case well, and for now he was conceding. He was pointing the way to a solution, however dubious it appeared to her; and this was progress. She would indulge him, of course. She would try things his way . . . until his way became her way.

Sarita set her eyes on the horizon. No one could face what lay ahead but her, however many hours her family might spend on music and prayer. She turned from Miguel without another word, picking up her empty bag, and began walking again, this time toward whatever lurked in the shade of the great tree in the distance.

There was no wind. In this still landscape, canopied by a storm-threatened sky, there was no sound. She wondered why she could no longer hear the relentless roll-and-rock that seemed to play continuously in her son’s head. Roll-and-rock? Rock-and-roll? Whatever, it was gone now. She was alone, for now. She swung her nylon bag lightly, in a gesture of defiance against doubt. Soon this strange escapade would be over. Soon she would have her son again—alive, and in her embrace.

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With my mother on her way, I can rest again, feel the infinite light, and listen to the music. I hear the songs of my youth even now, even through the haze of this dream. I hear their beat, demanding my complete attention. I hear their lyrics, the messages that describe pain and a solution to pain at the same time. I hear truth running just above the melody and somewhere beneath the words, always discreet, but always present. I belong to the music and to the life that beats within it.

It’s been a long journey through existence, a journey that started sometime before I could appreciate music—in fact, before hearing connected me to the physical world—and before I was aware of the struggles of men and women. It started before I knew anything of matter. My actual memories might have begun at the birth of my body, my initial attempts to breathe, and the sounds of my mother’s anguished cries. From there came the eventful ride from infancy to manhood, from student to master. I have traveled from pure potential to the thrill of physical being to a road-weary ending. I have gone from endless nights of lovemaking to this quiet night, with death whispering within and around me. It’s been a good life, a life of giving and receiving love without condition and beyond justification.

Love needs no justification; it is simply what we are. Men and women rarely allow themselves to feel the force of this. They know love only as a fallen symbol—a symbol meant to represent life, but one that has become corrupted by the many distortions of meaning. With the corruption of that one word, all symbols fall into confusion. Symbols grow into beliefs, and beliefs grow into petty tyrants that demand human suffering. All of this began with the fall of the first word: love.

There were many loves in my life, of course. There were always women eager to be touched, hungry to love and be loved. There were always women searching to see the truth of themselves in my eyes. In my life, I’ve loved them all. They had different faces, different names, but to me there was only one—only the fallen one, caught in a web of distortions and looking for a way back to truth. She seeks a path back to heaven even now, all the while believing the lies that keep her in hell.

Of course, she is all of us. She is Knowledge; and I can say now, without shame, that there was a time when she was Miguel. I had a good relationship with knowledge from the beginning. From my first breath, I was eager to learn the ways of sounds, symbols, and scribbled lines on paper. Like any healthy infant, I saw and heard everything. I felt in ways that adults around me had forgotten to feel. Sensation washed through me night and day, but clearly, sensation needed someone who could give testimony to its wonders. According to what I observed of the adult world around me, sensation needed a storyteller.

Feeling the flush of excitement that came with my first uttered word, and the thrill of seeing how it sent happiness racing through my parents and our friends, I was hooked. How quickly I became a devotee of words! How rapidly I used words to create a caricature of a little boy! Amazing, too, how words became the endless testimonial that is thought. In a very short time I grew exactly like those storytellers who populated my little-boy world. I happily collected assumptions and opinions, and the reward for my efforts was an incontestable identity. I knew myself well. Everyone else who knew me, knew me well, too—or so I believed.

I loved words and the universes that words created for me. I loved the power they gave me to convince other minds and change points of view. I loved the way words made it easy to romance girls and persuade knowledge-hungry boys like me. I loved the advantage that words gave me in school, both with peers and with teachers and then professors. I was always a good student. I was quick to memorize and quick to recall facts to mind. I was quick, that is, until I entered medical school. There, it seemed I had no advantage. No matter how hard I studied, how well I memorized, I could barely pass a test. My grades were poor, my temper was bad, and my self-confidence was plummeting. I wanted so much to follow in the footsteps of my brothers, but after my first semester in medical school, my prospects for a career as a doctor weren’t looking good. Things got so bad that my physiology professor approached me privately, asking why my grades failed to reflect the intelligence and enthusiasm I showed in class. I had no good answer. I told him how hard I was trying and how much energy I was putting into memorizing the material. He stopped me there. “Don’t memorize,” he said. “Use your imagination.”

This may have been the first time I heard words used in this way—to invite, rather than to convince. That professor was inviting me to break away from structure and to dream my life. He was giving me permission to experience the truth, not simply to observe the facts. My grades improved drastically after that—but, more important, the world as I knew it changed. This was the first of many steps away from knowledge, away from the compelling voice in my head. It was a small step, of course, because I was strongly bound to the laws of knowledge and, at that age, was knowledge’s greatest champion. I believed it could cure every illness and solve every problem. It defined me. I was knowledge, in all its youthful expression and tireless aggression. Without the me that was born of words and ideas, I could not exist—or so I believed.

Watching my mother make her way to the horizon and to her destination, I’m at ease. Seeing the distant tree from my present refuge among the branches of the Tree of Life, I feel only love. That tree, mirroring mine, is the symbol of knowledge—only that—and symbols have no influence on me. Now they don’t, but there was a time in my existence when I would have given anything to free myself of knowledge’s hold. I would say its power, but knowledge represents a false power, born in those exhilarating moments of infancy when language is perceived as the only path to paradise. From that first seduction, there seems only one way forward. This is simple human destiny, of course. Out of infinite light we are brought into physical being, flung into dark perplexity, and challenged to find our way back. There’s nothing that says we must burn with the same frequency of light that brought us here—but would it be so impossible? Bringing light to the obscurity caused by words is a determined choice, the path of a seeker.

My professor had asked me to dream the world from an academic point of view, but I soon discovered that dreaming is all we ever do. We imagine, and then we become. Those who are artists of the dream, whatever it may be, are artists of life. To dream means to construct reality, by whatever means available. A dog dreams the dream of a dog. A tree dreams itself in ways known only to the tree. It knows its body—every leaf and particle that makes it a universe. It knows the rejuvenating powers of sunlight, rain, and the nurturing soil. It perceives itself in relationship with all life, and it changes with the changing light, just as human bodies do. The human dream, on the other hand, adapts to changing knowledge. As human brains convert light into language, they learn to dream through words. We are gifted beyond our own understanding. Our words describe our reality. We are always dreaming, always redefining realities. In our sleeping hours, words are only the dim echoes of a waking dream, but the dreaming still continues. Like all creatures, we dream all the time. We dream an idea of who we are in relation to everything else. When other minds agree with us, we venture to call our dream truth. Depending on how we use knowledge, we can be victims or we can be responsible masters of our personal dream.

Just as I indulged knowledge so many years ago, there came a time when I had to refuse its authority. I had no cheering family then, and there was no community of humans to teach me how. I was alone, with only the ancient wisdom to comfort me. I was alone, as Sarita is now. Her journey to find me will begin in earnest in the world represented by that tree. Anyone can gather the pieces of an old dream, built by old knowledge. It takes a master to select the precious raw materials of a new and inspiring dream. This will be her challenge. She may fail or she may be victorious. Either way, Miguel will not be back. He is at home, here in the arms of eternity.

In his life as a man, he became aware of the truth of himself. Inch by inch, he slipped away from the temptations of knowledge. Ounce by ounce, he made his heart a weightless thing, emptying it of a thousand lies. The frequencies within him changed and intensified, until matter could not contain him. Revive the body, if you will, Mother. Gather the memories, bind them with faith, and let medical science do the rest. With eyes widened in excitement, see knowledge as if for the first time. Learn as you go. Be my heart in this quest, and grow lighter with every step. Do what you must. Try what you will . . . but Miguel will not be back.

Mother Sarita stood at the base of the second tree, feeling her heart battering against her chest as she gasped for breath. The tree had appeared so close, and yet the walk had seemed endless. Looking behind her, she could see the outline of Miguel’s tree against the sky. It stood in the light. This one did not. Being a wise woman, she recognized obscurity for what it was. There was no evil here, only the absence of something. No, not absence: scarcity. Light was everywhere, and existed in all things, but light was not entirely welcome in this spot. The ethereal glow that flooded the surrounding landscape met resistance here. What had her son told her? He had said that she should put her trust in an impostor. She had no opinion about impostors. She had a job to do, and she would accept any help, in any form.