Okay, this is Paul again. Bea did a wonderful job of conveying the sense of excitement we all felt during the first few years up in Oregon. And by the time Harry showed up, it was well on its way to becoming a place of tremendous energy and importance.
But there was one more surge in creativity that would come to define Solfield as much as the mound and all the other features.
Harry had gone back to Indiana for the winter, but he flew out to California to visit Anne and I in mid-January. One afternoon, Harry and I sat in my living room discussing his life back in Indiana. Harry was telling me about his library, and pondering what to do about it.
“The problem is, I’ll be gone for half the year now. And you know me – I like to read.”
“Oh, I know,” I agreed. “But can’t you just bring a bunch of books with you each spring when you come out? Enough to last you until you head home?”
“No, for several reasons. First of all, I don’t know ahead of time what I’m going to be inspired to read. I open two or three dozens books a week. I may read a sentence, or a chapter, or an entire book. But I don’t know ahead of time where my interests and inspiration will lead me.”
“Okay, I see. So without your library at your disposal, you don’t have many options.”
“Exactly. Now, I suppose I could get by for six months of the year without reading, but it would be my preference to have a variety of reading materials available. I’ll have to think about it.”
“Well,” I said, “Could you bring the library out west?”
Harry shrugged. “I’ve thought about it. But I don’t know where I would keep that many books. And besides, there are dozens of people back home who use them.”
“Oh, that reminds me,” I said. “I’ve been meaning to ask you about your life back in Indiana. How are things on John’s farm these days? And what is it you guys do there?”
Harry seemed excited by the question. “All sorts of things. It’s like a town in and of itself, in many ways.”
“How many people are we talking about?”
“Oh, I’d say there are probably 30 to 50 people there most of the time. Some of them live nearby, but many of them live on the farm itself.”
“What is it, like a commune?”
Harry laughed. “No, not really. More like a small town, as I said.”
“Is it a bunch of hippies?” I asked, smiling. “Be honest.”
“No, not really. Some of them, perhaps you would call hippies. But not really. Unless wearing your hair long or dressing in interesting and creative ways makes you a hippie. But these are just interesting, creative, and oftentimes spiritual people who desire to spend time together. And most of them don’t wear long hair or interesting clothes – just some of them.”
I wanted to know more about the place. “What do people do there?”
“Well, it’s not that different from Solfield, actually. But on a much smaller scale. Some of the people are farmers, and they love working in the garden. Some are artists, and they create all sorts of wonderful works of art. Brilliant, if you ask me. There are musicians in the group, and music can almost always be heard somewhere on the property. Some people spend most of their time in the library. Some go off alone to meditate. There is a great deal of conversation. Lots of recovering philosophers there.”
“Recovering philosophers?” I asked with curiosity. “And what is a recovering philosopher?”
Harry laughed. “Someone still struggling with the fact that philosophy is dead.”
“What?” I asked loudly. “What in the world does that mean?”
Harry smiled. “It means that we’re moving beyond it. Beyond philosophy. In fact, maybe that will be the title of my next book.”
“But what do you mean, beyond philosophy?” I persisted. “How exactly is philosophy dead?”
“Well,” he answered, “what is philosophy? The love of knowledge? The love of truth? The search for truth? But what is truth? What is true?”
“I don’t know,” I said, “I’m asking you.”
“Philosophy is a head game,” Harry continued. “It’s a game of the intellect, trying to figure out reality.”
“Okay, I guess I agree with that,” I said. “But why is it dead? There are millions of philosophers out there who would have something to say about that.”
“Oh, they’ll come around. Give them time. They’re still immersed in their intellect, bound by their insistence on a somehow perfectly logical world. Reasoned argument can only take you so far. And in fact, it hasn’t actually taken them very far at all, has it? 2,500 years of reasoned argument, and what have you got? Tell me? Where are the philosopher kings? Where is Utopia? What is truth? Hmm?”
I shrugged my shoulders. “I don’t know.”
“You see,” Harry went on, “the truth can’t be found with the intellect. That’s not what the intellect is for.”
“Well, what is the intellect for, then?” I asked.
“The intellect is a tool, an interpretive tool. It’s function is to make sense and to organize whatever you are imputting into your mind, into your awareness. But philosophers have always placed the intellect in the driver’s seat, put it in charge. They have been lost in their own intellect, playing with ideas and symbols. Playing a game. A very fun and fulfilling game, but not nearly as important as they have viewed it to be. You can’t find truth with the intellect.”
“Well then, how do you find truth?”
“Through experience.”
“Experience?”
“Indeed.”
“I’ll have to think about that for a while,” I said.
“You do that,” Harry said smiling. “In the meantime, I have to figure out what to do with my library. Does it stay in Indiana, or does it come west?”
I knew the answer to that question. “It’s coming west,” I said with confidence.
“Okay, where?” he asked.
“Well, you said the farm in Indiana is a lot like Solfield, only smaller, right?”
“Right.”
“So would those people come out to Oregon?”
“Who?” Harry said. “The people living on the farm? Or the people who visit?”
“Both,” I answered. “And we can build you a library.”
“Well now, that’s an interesting idea,” Harry said. “I wonder how the folks in Indiana would react to that.”
And suddenly, I had an idea. A big idea. An idea that would change Solfield forever.
“How about this,” I said, standing up. I felt a surge of adrenaline. “Oh, man, Harry, I have an idea.”
“What? Tell me.”
“Okay.” I took a deep breath. “Remember back in Ohio, you had all those statues around the base of your mound?”
“Sure,” Harry nodded. “I still have them.”
“Well, since Soul Mound is a large scale replica of your mound, it seems to me that we need to incorporate your statues somehow. So it’s a true representation of what you originally created. You said you put them there because they represented many of the spiritual paths.”
“Right. To symbolize my understanding that they are all after the same thing.”
“Exactly!” I said. I was trying to contain my excitement. “So let’s do the same thing at Soul Mound, only bigger.”
“Bigger statues?”
“No, even bigger. Temples!”
“Temples?” Harry said, standing up as well. “You want to build temples?”
“Yes! Around the base of the mound. Lots of them. A church, a mosque, a Jewish temple, a Buddhist temple. Whatever you think we need.”
Harry thought for moment, and then he began to slowly pace around the room. “How big?” he asked.
“Oh, not that big. Maybe a thousand square feet, maybe two. Big enough for people to go in and sit, pray, read, whatever they want to do. And we could keep your books in them.”
A light seemed to go on in the back of Harry’s mind. His face lit up. “Each temple could house the books pertaining to that religion or path.”
“Yes!” I rubbed my hands together and joined Harry in his pacing. “A climate controlled room, in each temple. For the books. Harry, we can do this.”
Harry stopped pacing and turned toward me. I could see that his mind was racing. “What about the cost? This would be expensive.”
“Money’s not an issue,” I said. “Do you know how much we sold the company for?”
“No,” Harry said. “You never told me.”
“A lot.” I said. “More than I could ever spend. It’s burning a hole in my pocket. And we have plenty of stone. We’ve been removing slabs of it from the sides of the mound for three years. And there are more limestone deposits on the property.”
Harry continued staring at me. And then, gradual, the intensity on his face turned into a smile. “I’m on board if you are.”
And that’s how it started. A moment of intense inspiration, of trembling excitement. I saw it all: a ring of temples encircling Soul Mound, each with hundreds and even thousands of books, all available for visitors to peruse or even take outside and up onto the mound to read.
The two of us were so excited we drove to the store and bought a bottle of champagne. When we returned home, Anne was there. We told her about the temple idea.
“Wow, that is a great idea. That will change the whole clearing. Yes, I can see it. Lots of temples, right? Not just a few.”
“Maybe a dozen or so, I would think,” I said. “We want to represent the major religions, as well as some of the lesser-known spiritual paths."
Anne nodded. Then she turned to Harry. “What do you think? This is definitely your department.”
Harry smiled. “I’m almost speechless!”
“No, not you!” she said.
“Well, no, I suppose I’m not entirely speechless. But I’m thinking. I’m pondering the meaning of it all.”
“How so?” I asked him.
“Well,” Harry said, “you mentioned the statues I had placed around the original mound in Ohio. Now, my thinking back then was that all religions and spiritual paths are really moving toward the same thing, the same realization. They all lead to our source, to Truth, to God. Whatever name you’d like to use. But all paths lead there eventually. So now I’m seeing Soul Mound as representing the mountain of Truth, of source. It represents God. And the unity of God’s creation.
“So we build these temples, and they all face this mountain of Truth, but each from its own angle. Each temple, each person, sees the mountain from their own unique vantage point, but they’re all facing the same mountain. And the problem with the human race has been that, for the most part, we haven’t known that we’re all facing the same mountain.
“Each religion, or the followers of that religion, seem to believe, whether they admit it or not, that their approach to the mountain is the right one, and that those who follow different paths are wrong in some way, or at least off the mark.
“But by placing all of these temples around Soul Mound, there is a statement that is being made: All paths lead to the same place, to the same source. All of us are looking at the very same mountain, but we each have our own perspective of it. We’re each looking at it from our own angle. But rather than judge and compare and find fault with each other’s approach to God, we can not only accept but even celebrate the diversity of angles from which we are viewing God.
“So how about that?” Harry asked us, his eyes gleaming.
Anne and I looked at one another, then we lifted our glasses toward Harry.“Here’s to the mountain of Truth,” I said.
“To the mountain of Truth,” said Harry.
“And all the other stuff Harry just said!” said Anne.
And so we toasted our newest venture, our latest, and perhaps greatest, idea. One that would eventually come to define Solfield as much as any other feature.
I couldn’t wait until spring.
