— Ah, Petka, — said Chapaev, — I explain and explain it to you. Any form is emptiness. But what does that mean?
— What?
— It means that emptiness is any form. Close your eyes. Now open them.
I don’t know how to describe that second in words.
What I saw resembled a
luminous stream containing all the colors of the rainbow, an immeasurably wide river that began somewhere in infinity and disappeared into the same infinity. It stretched around our island in every direction as far as the eye could see, yet it was not the sea, but precisely a river, a stream, because it had a clearly perceptible current.
The light with which it flooded the three of us was incredibly bright, but there was nothing blinding or frightening about it, because at the same time it was grace, happiness, and love of infinite power. In fact, those three words, debased by literature and art, are utterly incapable of conveying anything.
Simply gazing at the constantly emerging multicolored lights and sparks was enough, because everything I could possibly think or dream of was part of this
rainbow stream—or, more precisely, this rainbow stream was everything I could think or experience, everything that could or could not exist—and I knew for certain that it was not something separate from me. It was me, and I was it. I had always been it, and nothing else.
— What is it? I asked.
— Nothing, Chapaev replied.
— No, that’s not what I mean, I said. What is it called?
— In different ways, Chapaev replied. I call it the provisional river of absolute love. In abbreviated form: URAL. Sometimes we become it, sometimes we assume forms, but in reality there are neither forms, nor us, nor even the Ural. That is why they say: we, forms, the Ural...
“Chapaev and Emptiness”
Viktor Pelevin / Viktor Pelevin’s third novel, written in 1996. The author himself describes his work as “the first work in world literature whose action takes place in absolute emptiness.” /
