Nirvana Effect Read Online Free PDF Page B

.  They’re quite a match , Nockwe and she .  She ran the village work crews from sun up to sun down as the chieftain’s wife .
    “Yes, but what happened to Mahanta?” Edward asked.
    “Mahanta died,” she said. 
    I’ve heard this before.  “Yes, but how?” he asked.
    “You have many questions, Ed-ward.”  She peered at him for approval on her pronunciation.  He nodded with his eyes and she grinned slightly.  “Now you must sleep.  You must rest and you must heal.”
    “But I have so many questions,” he insisted.
    “And so does Manassa.  But first you must be well.”  She knelt down on the ground beside him.  “Your skull seems broken.  Nockwe kicked you hard, but I am told two others got in blows and almost killed you.  My husband stopped them.”  He heard her open a box.  “Manassa told me to give this to you.  This is your last shot.  He showed me how to do it.  It will heal you.”
    Edward glanced down as far as he could manage.  In his lower periphery vision he saw her fiddling with a syringe.
    “What is that?” he asked.  I’m not going to let them inject mud into my veins or something.
    Her warm hands pulled his arm open to expose the vein.  She answered with a sing-song voice.  “Nectar of the gods, that only Manassa and his chosen may drink.  Magic medicine, he said.”
    A doctor.  Perhaps this Manassa is not a tribesman at all.  No wonder I’m still alive.   “Is Manassa a doctor?” he asked.  Maybe he has painkillers…
    She looked at him quizzically for a moment and then gave him the injection.  It hurt; her nursing skills left much to be desired.  Edward wondered why Manassa hadn’t administered the medicine himself.
    “Now, Manassa told me to tell you this, in these exact words.”  She breathed in deep and looked up, reciting mechanically what he had told her.  “Something strange is about to occur.  Don’t do anything except fix your head.  Fix your head.  Fix every part of your head.  Fix your body and don’t move your body.  You will have the power to heal your body but if you move your body you may die.” 
    Edward’ s stomach turned somersaults.  This was not a doctor; more like another “ medicine man ” .  For all he knew, she might have injected peyote or worse. Certainly something was happening. He felt as though he were swimming at the bottom of the ocean, with all its crushing pressure bearing down, and every time he stroked in one direction he was spun completely around. 
    He was not losing consciousness, but it was certainly being altered.
    “Just fix your head.”  She said again.  “Just fix your head.”
    The last time she said that, it took her a full two minutes.  It was at the end of these two minutes, as she turned to walk away in slow motion, that Edward noticed something was wrong inside of him.
    The rushing sensation stopped, as though he were plunging off a cliff and had frozen in mid-air at the onset of free fall.
    Disconnect.  Disconnection. 
    He felt a peace that he had achieved only once before.  Three weeks into the arduous retreat he’d taken to qualify as a Jesuit, he had sat u pon a mountain top from one sunrise to the next.  He’d achieved a total serenity, a detachment from this world.  He had not hungered or tired.  He’d felt at one with the universe.
    His mentor had called it “being with God”.  He knew of other faiths that had terms for the same thing.  It was this experience that most Jesuits shared, in the tradition of their patron saint, Ignatious, which caused their order to be more liberal than most of their Catholic brethren. 
    The sensation he felt now (or rather, the lack of it) was far stronger than anything he’d experienced on the mountaintop.  Total disconnect.
    Life is.  I am.
    Perception was perception, which had its own realities and significances and no particular emotional connotation unless he chose to have it.  Detached, he could view his surroundings far more