Victor: Quite right. It’s Time which determines these things, both the array of forces, and the pattern, the path of development of both animate and inanimate worlds. As for your reservation that my statements contradict your knowledge and experience, I’m afraid one has to conclude that you, my friend, have not yet acquired even the humblest of knowledge and experience which Ecclesiastes used to have, to observe that everything happens in its good time; that there’s time for birth and time for death, time for killing and time for healing.
Andrei: Time for sorrow and time for joy. Yes, that was a clever move to put me down, considering that
Ecclesiastes is the only author in the Old Testament I have any regard for. But, to tell you the truth, I’ve always regarded him as a great lyricist and viewed this passage as lyrics, not as physics. You seem to have a physicist’s point of view on everything, resorting here and there to physical terms, did you study physics?
Victor: On the contrary, the education I received two decades ago graduating from a conservatory is rather of a lyrics than a physics nature. Until my enlightenment I used to be a musician and played with the
Moscow philharmonic orchestra.
Andrei: Why did you quit? A musician in a philharmonic orchestra is an excellent job.
Victor: Because «no one lights a lamp and puts in under a bushel; instead he puts it on the lampstand, where it gives light for everyone in the house.»
Well, concerning my choice of physical terms, I must stress that if you seek to explain something, you should choose the language which can offer us its most succinct description. And physics can offer us the most precise picture of our present-day reality. Of course, this language should be comprehensible to the audience you address. But you seem familiar with physics’ basics?
Andrei: Yes, quite. I simply cannot understand how a musician…
Victor: could grasp the language of physics? It’s the result of lengthy practice of yoga, of work with one’s own body and mind. You see, neither our body nor mind differs in any way from the rest of physical instruments, except that they are more complex. It’s only natural that I in my work come to the same conclusions which physics make, that’s why I use their language.
Andrei: Funny thing: yoga has always been regarded as an idealistic, religious teaching, while you are proving to be a rabid physical materialist.
Victor: I’m neither. Idealism – materialism are simply points of view, instruments, say, kind of glasses we use to look at the world, some glasses we select are good for reading newspapers; others are good for watching TV. Religion starts where knowledge in its impotence gives way to faith, reason to morals and ethics; the borderline between them is always relative and conditional.
Bachkov, approaching: Sunbathing?
Andrei: What else is there to do? I guess we’ll have to spend the rest of the holiday season here.
Bachkov: Well, it’s not up to me to decide who or what time is spent here, but I’m sure they won’t release you until the festival ends and its foreign guests leave the country.
Dandelion, an old man about 80, addressing Bachkov: Anatoli Sergeevich, could you please give me the keys. I want to weed this flowerbed with dahlias, time permitting.
Andrei: Time is no problem here.
Dandelion looks peevishly at Andrei, without saying anything.
