The Voice of Silence

The old man lived on the edge of a desert where stones seemed to be waiting for someone. Every morning, he drew a circle in the sand. Then he would place a point there. A child, who often came to observe him, asked him: — Why do you always start with a point? The old man smiles.

—Because every figure starts with something that still doesn’t look like anything, he said.
The next day, he scored two points.
—And now?
—Now, he says, there is a distance.
On the third day, he set down three.
—And now?
—Now, there is a relationship.

The child is thinking.
— So the world starts when things start answering each other?
The old man looked at the horizon.
—Maybe. Or maybe the world was already an answer before we knew how to ask the question.

Then the old man wrote in the sand:
Coincidence is an encounter. Concordance is a conversation.
The child did not understand.

Then the old man showed him a star.
—Do you see this light?
—Yes.
—She could be alone.
He showed another one.
—And that one?
—Her too.
He showed a third one.
—Yet, when they draw a shape in your gaze, you give them a name.
—A constellation.
—There. The stars didn’t necessarily gather to talk to you. But your gaze has discovered a dwelling between them.

The child asked:
—So do forms only exist in our eyes?
The old man replied:
—Here is one of the great doors of mystery.
He took a handful of sand.
—Men have discovered numbers that do not allow themselves to be broken down like the others. They have called them first.
—Why first?
—Because they seem to keep something irreducible within them. The other numbers can be composed from them.

The child gazed at the sand.
—So prime numbers are the stones of the number world?
—Maybe. But don’t turn a metaphor into a prison.
He wrote:
The first one is not always the one who comes before. He can be the one from whom others proceed.
The child remained for a long time before this sentence.

—What if the first was older than the beginning?
The old man did not answer.
He looked at the sky.
—A very ancient book begins with a strange phrase: “In the beginning was the Word.”
—The Verb?
—The Logos. The Word. The reason. The meaning. Or perhaps something that goes beyond all these words.
—Is it God?

The old man smiles.
—Some say so. Others are still looking. I prefer to keep the window open through which the question enters.
They resumed their march.
—What does this sentence mean then?
—Perhaps this: before the world was a collection of things, it was already possible for it to become intelligible.
The child frowned.
—Intelligible?
—Readable.

He picked up a stone.
—Look. To you, it’s a stone.
—Yes.
—For the geologist, it’s a story.
—Yes.
—For the surveyor, a form.
—Yes.
—For the poet, a memory.
—Yes.
—And for the one who prays, maybe a question.

The child took the stone in turn.
The old man continued:
The world does not become more mysterious when we understand its forms. It becomes mysterious otherwise.
They arrived at an old building. Its immense stones seemed to be placed on a scale that time had not erased.
The child went around it.
—If several proportions are found here, he says, is it a proof?
—Proof of what?
—That those who built knew.
—Maybe.
—That the world has a structure?
—Maybe.
—That an Intelligence drew it?

The old man sat down.
—Maybe. But be wary of the maybe who want to become certainties.
He took a stick and traced several lines.
— A coincidence can arise from chance. Another too. A third again. But when forms, proportions, orientations and rhythms begin to respond to each other, our mind experiences something special.
—What?
—A concordance.
He erased a line.
—This is not yet proof.
He erased another one.
—This is not necessarily a message.
Then he placed the stick.
—But this is no longer quite an isolated encounter.

The child asked:
—So what is it?
The old man replied softly:
—It’s an invitation to look longer.
The child remained silent, then asked:
—And intuition, where does it start?
The old man replied:
—Perhaps in the very place where the concordance precedes us.
—How so?
— The researcher sometimes feels a formula before he can demonstrate it. The poet sometimes hears a line before knowing its words. The sage sometimes recognizes a truth without knowing yet how to name it. Even the curious jaded person, who believes he has seen everything, can be stopped by a correspondence that he was not looking for.

He added:
Intuition is perhaps the concordance before it becomes knowledge.
—Is this a revelation?
—No. It’s a door. And any door must remain open both ways.
For we do not know whether the world speaks, or whether we are simply learning to listen.
They remained in front of the stones until sunset.
Then the child says:
—I think I understand.
—Tell me.
— Chance can produce a form. But when several forms respond to each other, they may perhaps teach us something about our way of seeing.
—Yes.
—And maybe also something about the world.
—Yes.
— And maybe something about what connects the world to our gaze.

The old man closed his eyes.
—You have just found the beginning of wisdom.
The child smiled.
—Primosophy?
The old man opened his eyes.
—If you want.
—The wisdom of the first?
—Yes.
—The wisdom of prime numbers?
—Yes.
—And the wisdom of the First?

The old man did not answer right away.
Then he said:
—Perhaps the First is not the one who dominates all others. Perhaps it is the one who makes them possible.
The night was coming down.
A first star appeared.
Then a second.
Then a third.
The child looked for a figure between them.
—Look, he said.
The old man looked.
—I can’t see anything.
—Yes. There.

The child connected the stars with his finger.
The old man smiles.
—Now I see.
And he understood that wisdom was perhaps not to know if the figure had been drawn in the sky before their birth.
She was to know that they could recognize her together.

Then he said a last word:
The world does not owe us its meaning. We do not owe our certainty to it. But when form meets gaze, when number meets spirit, when stone meets memory, something opens between the two.
Behind them, the circle drawn in the morning was already disappearing into the sand.
But the point remained.
And, in the darkness, it looked like a star.
Or perhaps to an origin.
Or maybe just at one point.
Because sometimes, thought the child, the first wisdom consists in leaving to the first this mystery: being first without ever pretending to be explained.

Then the silence answered.