Another Way of Knowing

Robert Wolff: Rafflesia

This is the story of the big flower in the jungle of Malaysia. A bare outline of the story is in the book What It Is To Be Human, now called Original Wisdom, Stories of an Ancient Way of Knowing.

The Sng’oi are (were) one of the several tribes of Aborigines, as they were called in Malaysia. Few people knew them; travel writers referred to them as remnants of Stone Age people. They were not “Stone Age” of course; they used steel knives, metal pots and pans.. They lived in the deep jungle; they were nomads and truly peaceful - they avoided any kind of confrontation. Their shelters - temporary because they moved every year or so - were very flimsy bamboo structures to sleep in, often raised high off the ground, to stay out of the way of wildlife. These structures did not ‘belong’ to anyone in particular. Someone feeling sleepy would go to one of the two or more structures of what I called “settlements”- they were too small to be villages. There were rarely more than a dozen people, including children (they had very few) in any one settlement.

It was their custom, in the morning when people first woke, to share their dreams. These dreams they told me were “stories from the real world.” This world, which we call reality, is a shadow of that world of dreams the Sng’oi said. As real as a shadow, which is not very real at all.

Those early morning dream talks were magical, the times when I stayed overnight. Sometimes the people who had slept in one house - maybe six, or seven - would sit in a sort of circle, other times we just sat up from where we had been sleeping (in a huddle, which is another story!). Often, it seemed, the little snippets of dreams that individuals reported were connected into a little story. Not always. Sometimes the bits of dream images did not cohere, and we went on our way without knowing what the day would give. But surprisingly often a coherent idea emerged that bound all the dreams together. Somehow the telling brought out how this dream added to, or fitted in with another piece someone else remembered of a dream. Children often had the clearest dreams.

One day the dreams in the little house I had slept in told a very clear story: there is a flower that is very special in the jungle (and they all seemed to know where). It seemed insignificant to me. The jungle is obviously full of flowers, full of everything. I would have forgotten the dream but for the fact that when we met the people who had slept in the other sleeping huts (I think there were three in that settlement), it seemed that they had dreamt a very similar dream.

After getting up I sat down somewhere and wrote vocabulary words in the little note book that I carried with me. A clumsy task because I am not trained in recording sounds in writing, but good enough for my own use. I tried to learn and remember at least some of their language.

After probably an hour of that I looked around and noticed that there were only two or three people left. I figured they had gone out to look for food in the nearby jungle. We are so used to thinking that what one does during the day is work for a living. When one meets people who do not work for money, one assumes that what they do is look for food. They did look for food, of course, but I already knew that it was not “work” and usually only a few people would leave the settlement at a time. It was unusual that they all seemed to have left at the same time.

Then a little girl who had slept in the hut with me approached me. I did not know her name, but knew that she was bright, alert, very sweet, and strangely mature for what I guessed was her age - I guessed maybe five or six. She hunkered down next to me, not saying anything. I was used to people not saying much, and felt comfortable sitting next to her without having to make conversation. Then she reached out and touched my hand, very lightly, and said, Come we go.

Where, I asked?

The flower, she answered (my knowledge of their language was very limited).

Oh yes, I had forgotten about the dream.

She took my hand and we started out.

After a little while, walking on what could with some imagination be called a path, she looked up and said, When you learn more you will see the animals who are watching us. Obviously I had been unaware of animals looking at us! (At the time it never occurred to me to wonder how she knew that I did not see those animals). I knew she meant well, suggesting it was just a matter of learning whatever quality one needs to be aware of other beings in one’s environment.

We did not walk far, perhaps half an hour, or a little more, through the jungle, which to me, at that time, still felt awesome, mysterious and unknown, led by a little girl who was obviously quite sure where she was going.

Suddenly we came to a clearing, almost round. In the middle of the open space was a strange plant-like thing, perhaps four feet tall, raw flesh-colored. There was a smell of rotten meat which I realized came from that strange plant - flower? There was no visible green, although the flower (?) must be a plant of some kind (later I learned that of course it was a plant, called Rafflesia, very rare, it grows only in Sumatra and on the Malay peninsula, now Malaysia).

Around the perimeter of the clearing sat the people of the settlement. Nobody said anything, but they all seemed intensely occupied watching this strange growth. At first I had trouble with the smell, it smelled like carrion. Flies and probably other beasties were crawling all over the raw pink flesh.

The little girl and I sat down, between others, but the clearing was big enough so that we were spaced several feet from each other. The little girl and I sat close together, however.

I started to say something. The little girl reacted with a sort of shiver, and reached out to my hand again, her face saying, Shhh, quiet! When I made another noise, her hand squeezed my hand. We sat in silence.

I had a hard time keeping focused on that plant. In my western scientist frame of mind I was trying to find words to describe the plant, the experience, wondering what those people saw that was so interesting. It seemed just another jungle mystery to me. Surely there were all kinds of growths unknown to me. And I wondered how they knew from the fragments of our dreams that this flower was here, and how had they known where it was? Many questions and no answers. My thoughts fluttered here and there.

The little girl increased the pressure on my hand; she was obviously exerting as much pressure as she could. Why should I be quiet? What was it I should hear? What was I supposed to do?

I concentrated on the little hand that held mine. I sensed that I felt more than the grip of that hand, I felt some sort of connection, a current of some kind…

As soon as I stopped playing word games in my head, and just concentrated on the hand, the connection with the girl, and the very strange situation I was in, I felt something else. At first it seemed like a sort of rushing sound, like a nearby stream perhaps? I looked around, but could not find a direction. No, it was not the sound of water, but another sound - no, not even a sound. This was something else, as if people were murmuring but heard from very far off. And not even murmuring…

Then, I do not know how, but suddenly I knew that what I heard/perceived was the intense, concentrated absorption, observation, awe of a small band of people watching a flower. I became aware that they were not thinking words, they were not interpreting what they saw (and smelled), they had no thought of what it meant, what the name of that being was. They were getting to know the flower. They were in awe of yet another manifestation of the oneness.

I do not know how long we sat there. It must have been an hour, at least. And for much of that time I shared in the communal awe, storing the whole gestalt in my memory: the flower, the smell, the dream, the people, the jungle, the little girl - all part of one Oneness.

Then, as one, we got up, still silent, and walked back to the little settlement.

Nothing was ever said when we got back. What more could we say?

There are no words.