The Disentanglement of the Me

“Why this exaggerated sense of thine importance,” Khalid asks himself in the K.L. MS. , “when a little ptomaine in thy cheese can poison the source of thy lofty contemplations?

Why this inflated conception of thy Me, when an infusion of poppy seeds might lull it to sleep, even to stupefaction?

What avails thy logic when a little of the Mandragora can melt the material universe into golden, unfolding infinities of dreams?

Why take thyself so seriously when a leaf of henbane, taken by mistake in thy salad, can destroy thee?

But the soul is not dependent on health or disease. The soul is the source of both health and disease. And life, therefore, is either a healthy or a diseased state of the soul.

“One day, when I was rolling these questions in my mind, and working on a reed basket to present to my friend the Hermit as a farewell memento, his serving-monk brings me some dried figs in a blue kerchief and says, ‘My Master greets thee and prays thee come to him.’ I do so the following morning, bringing with me the finished basket, and as I enter the Hermitage court, I find him repairing a stone wall in the vineyard. As he sees me, he hastens to put on his cloak that I might not remark the sackcloth he wore, and with a pious smile of assurance and thankfulness, welcomes and embraces me, as is his wont. We sit down in the corridor before the chapel door. The odorous vapor of what was still burning in