To See without seeing

"Yes. Physical swimming, without aid from Mashurmastra."

"Yes, Professor. I learned to swim in the sea while out fishing with my father, long ago."

"What is the first thing you must master when learning to swim?"

"The first thing? Isn't it –" He was about to say learning how to do the various strokes, but no, that wasn't it. The more important thing was – 

"How to float."

"Precisely," Professor Aionia answered. 

"No matter the instructions on how to paddle properly, no matter the devices such as board or tube, you will never be able to swim comfortably and with your own power unless you know the single, fundamental skill: knowing how to float naturally, to not drown. Once you know how to float," she paused, gauging Elwin's expression – "you can swim forever."

Elwin understood at once what Professor Aionia meant.

"So if I learn how to float – learn how to control energy – all the Elemental Arts shall be in my grasp!"

"That is right. The various swimming styles are the Elemental Arts, and the various swimming strokes the individual forms. Just as people swim in specific ways, people control energy in specific methods for a chosen purpose, and this manifests in our living world as the Four Arts that you see and know."

"Thus, Elwin, the first step in your training will be in mastering how to float – how to comfortably perceive the energy of all around you with your mind."

Elwin couldn't hold back his excitement. It was like he was made cognizant of a truth at last, and he could see the direction of the road he should go.

"How do I begin?" He exclaimed, leaning in.

"With this," Professor Aionia stepped aside, revealing a sizable metal cylinder about the dimensions of Elwin's thigh. It was silvery and polished smooth – he could see his own reflection and the Professor's own in it.

"What's it for?"

"It's to help you perceive energy, and learn how to see it. It is densely packed Tenaliton, a noble metal with a singular tune; when I heat it up and make it red-hot, it shall stand out from the hymn of the trees, the grass, the winds, the Sun and the Moon in the background."

"'Stand out'?"

"Feeling energy with the eyes and face is one thing, but that is only one aspect of perceiving the world. You will learn how to feel the vibrant energy of this metal cylinder with your Asha."

"Asha?"

"A dimension of awareness we possess in addition to others, hypothesized and modeled during the golden age of investigations in experimental philosophy about a century ago. When the other professors instruct you to listen to the melody of the rocks, or feel the rhythm of the water, or the meaning of a sona, they would have told you to use your 'mind.' What they mean is use your 'Asha.'"

"Yeah, I remember them telling us that! So more precisely, it's like a mind's-eye, or intuition?" asked Elwin, remembering how he did not need to think consciously back in Professor Thales's class.

"Yes, to describe it roughly. We hypothesize that Asha is a product of our consciousness. Here, put this on."

Professor Aionia handed Elwin a blindfold of brown cloth, soft to the touch.

"It is easy to give into the temptation of sight during training. Consider this a barrier, so you must rely on your Asha instead."

Elwin put it on over his right eye – the only eye he had, after all. He chuckled to himself, wondering whether he could sense or do anything at all now that his good eye was covered as well.

"Let us move away from the metal."

She guided him about fifty feet away, a considerable distance.

"Now, muster a deep, calming breath, and shed away the other senses you possess. I ask you to let go of most thoughts until all your mind perceives is a velvet dark."

Elwin took a hundred measured breaths in calm rhythm, as Professor Aionia guided him so.

"What do you see?"

"Nothing. Nothing, Professor. It's just dark, but not completely. It's got a deep purple in it, a fuzzy purple mixed in with black."

"Good. Sustain this sensation."

Without a moment of hesitation, Professor Aionia outstretched her Quan-laden left hand, and from that distance, lit the cylinder of metal ablaze with the power of her mind, making it glow red hot. Several yards of earth under her boots frosted over, its energy shunted away.

And at the forefront of Elwin's conscious observation, in the soft black, Elwin saw a spark of golden light flash to his left, and weaves of gold begin to dance in the distance where the metal should be. The gold threads were thin, barely visible in what Professor Aionia referred to as his Asha, and ever so it flickered into existence and out, disappearing, appearing, disappearing, appearing.

"May I ask for what you see now?"

Elwin spoke quietly but with speed, trying to not let go of what he observed in that eigengrau.

"...Gold threads. Threads of gold. They are very thin – oh no, they are disappearing again..."

"You are doing well, Elwin. Continue to focus on them."

Professor Aionia stretched her hand and fired up the metal cylinder once again, this time imbuing it with greater and greater energy, now white-hot, sizzling the air around it, vibrating the stone below.

Once more Elwin saw a bright flash to his left where Professor Aionia was, and when he saw where the gold threads have been, they were now much more lustrous and bright, the threads no longer thin lines that could be snapped but thick strands that weaved about in measured dances afar.

"Do you see the strands of gold?"

"Yes. They're much brighter... they're so bright now. Woah, ha, this – this is quite the sight!" He exclaimed, feeling like a little boy at sea on his father's shoulder. He suppressed his urge to throw his blindfold off to see the sights in reality.

"Wonderful. Alright, now, I will take you closer and closer towards the source."

"To the metal?"

"Correct. I've heated it up from afar."

He held Professor Aionia's hand and shuffled closer to the white-hot cylinder of metal, taking care not to stumble over a loose stone, all the while the golden strands in his mind's eye grew closer, more vibrant, mesmerizing.

He was now only ten feet away from it, and his ears perceived the sizzling of the air, his face raw with its heat. Even so, he kept his eyes closed, his Asha concentrating with all its strength upon the sights he saw.

In front of him the strands of gold and orange were packed tightly in the shape of a cylinder, buzzing, vibrating with fury as if strings from an instrument plucked by a powerful hand. And around the cylindrical mass of buzzing lines were numerous thinner threads that stretched outwards in all directions like sunbeams – many away, and some directly to him at his face.

"Do you understand what the golden threads are?"

Elwin waved his right hand in front of his cheek, and saw the threads stop just short of him, and felt the heat on the back of his hand instead; and knew in that moment that the threads he was witnessing had to be energy. 

Elwin nodded.

"Excellent. Now, maintain your focus, as I take the heat away. See what happens." She counted. "On the count of three."

And as Professor Aionia said so, she pulled all the heat out from the metal and away, and released it in a burst of fire next to them both; Elwin watched, stupefied, as the cylinder of golden strands thinned and disappeared entirely from his view, and to his left saw empty space light up and disappear with fireworks of yellow. Then all became silent; his Asha became dark once more.

"You may take off your blindfold now."

Elwin took off the cloth, drops of hot sweat on his forehead. He knelt down and blinked hard, coming sense to the sight afforded by his real eye again. 

Professor Aionia helped him up.

"Energy, Elwin – is all around us. Where you've felt it before with the other senses, you were able to see it for the first time with that called the Asha. Today was to demonstrate to you of their existence; to show you what the vast sea is, to teach you that it is possible to float in it."

"What must I do now?"

"You must now train to tune your Asha to the voices of the world; to attain a supreme state, where you feel not just the energy of heated metal, but all the way down to the vibration of a blade of grass, a tremble of a single dew in the morning mist."

How long ahead his goal was! But Elwin was daunted no more. He'd do everything to get there. And as he stood there, locked in deep thought, Professor Aionia handed him a round stone about the size of his fist, gray streaked with green.

"You shall practice each day to hone and clarify the sight of your Asha, until you are able to hear and see the melody of this piece of stone. When you are able to tell me what this stone is made of, come find me again for the next stage of your journey."

And with that, Elwin thanked his Tanaar, and set out to his goal.

***

The task was difficult, and profusely so.

Each day, every waking hour not dedicated to class, Elwin closed his eyes, yearning for the voices of the world, the threads of gold in his Asha. But he saw nothing. 

He was frustrated by his failure of progress; but remembered back to when and why Professor Aionia heated up that cylinder of metal to show the existence of energy.

Perhaps, Elwin thought, the reason why he could see the golden strands so clearly back then was because the metal cylinder was so hot and dense with power. What were some things like that in the natural world, which hummed and carried such power?

And as Elwin pondered that exact line of a question, he felt the warmth of the noon on his neck, knew such a thing was there all along, and tilted his head and laughed at the sky.

The Sun!

And so in the knoll of a grassy meadow east of the campus he sat, listening, craning his ears to the roar of the Sun.

Gradually his mind began to unwind with its worries and stress; and at the striking of that comforting dark in his vision he saw and felt the threads of gold reaching to his head and neck, on his hands and feet, the embrace of the Sun in its totality. He lifted his eyes, yet closed, to face the Sun, and witnessed a flaming star, brilliant with not threads but entire tapestries of orange and gold, an uncountable number of strands weaving past in, around, and within itself, quaking the very space it dominated, piercing the dark and illuminating it with vibrant light. Even though his eyes were closed, such was the brilliance of the Sun that he could not look at it with his Asha past a single minute; he understood why people revered it, why it was holy, and shuddered for there was no existence on Earth that could match its strength.

Now that he saw the Sun, he'd need to see what the water, the earth, and the air felt and appeared to him. And so, Elwin moved to a new abode of meditation each day, each time, craning his Asha for all that breathed.

On the eve of the twenty-first day of his meditation, while Elwin sat upon a boulder listening to the breaking of waves on the lakeside shore, he saw what the energy of the Sun did to the waters. Far away, in the glistening dark of his Asha, he saw the heat of the Sun strike the surface of what should be the lake; as he breathed out, and sharpened the lens of his perception, he saw spaces where the Sun's rays had hit sizzle with light, thin specks and threads appearing, roiling, jumping, and disappearing. He sat there for hours and hours, holding himself onto that tiniest of hints, and gradually, the strands of what should be water became more numerous, more vibrant, until at last he could see a surface of golden strands appear into existence, waving in rhythm like fabric upon the wind, stretching into the horizon. He heard the splashing of a wave upon the boulder he sat, and saw the aurum strands snap and break upon an invisible boundary, momentarily lighting up with energy given to it by water; and as he waited, and waited for hours some more, the great boulder on which he sat was invisible no longer, and was instead a golden throne, latticed, crisscrossed, with the threads all around him. It was quieter than the water and the Sun. 

And as he sat there, marveling at what he could see with his Asha, he heard also the rushing of the wind past his ear, and turned to see flecks of gold wheezing past him; and in this epiphany, the entire world became an orchestra of energies. He lowered his head, eyes still closed, on the piece of stone in his hand that Professor Aionia had given, and to his delight could finally see its own threads of gold, the shape and elegance of its latticed weave. To find out what this stone was made of, he needed only to compare it to the other stones he saw – at the terraphysical collection in the Library of Aeternitas.

There were more than a hundred stones in the collection of the Library. Elwin closed his eyes and saw them with his Asha, many appearing to him as different shapes and density of golden threads; the venerable Librarian saw Elwin with the blindfold gazing at the stones, and a memory from a past struck him about a girl who did the same thing, now a Professor; and he smiled, returning to his book.

Elwin came upon the last stone of the collection, and recognized it at once the elegance of its weave, and shape of its structured threads. There was no mistake; it was the same as the very stone that rested in his hand. He took off his blindfold, and read its name:

Olivine.