The Mountain Shadow

by Gregory David Roberts

see . . . ’ ‘I don’t know how the Tantrics do it. All that physical penance, sacrifice and performing strenuous rituals, every day, for the whole of their lives. We teachers have it easy, compared to that. But we still go nuts, once in a while, under the sheer weight of being so fucking nice to everybody. Light the damn chillum, please. Where were we?’ ‘Khaderbhai’s errors,’ I said, lighting the chillum for him. He puffed for a while, found the stream, and floated his eyes into mine. ‘Tell me what you know about the movement toward complexity,’ he said, staring fixedly at me. ‘Khaderbhai said that if you take a snapshot picture of the universe, every billion years, all the way back to the Big Bang, we can see that the universe is always getting more complex. And that phenomenon, the continuous movement toward complexity, from the Big Bang to now, is the irreducibly defining characteristic of the universe as a whole. So, if this movement toward complexity defines the entire history of the universe –’ ‘– then it’s a pretty good candidate as a reference point, for a definition of Good and Evil that is objective, and also universally acceptable,’ Idriss finished for me. ‘Anything that tends toward complexity is Good. Anything that tends against complexity is Evil.’ ‘And the quick moral test,’ I added, ‘is to ask yourself the question: If everybody in the world did this thing I’m doing, or thinking of doing, would it help us get to more complexity, or hold us back?’ ‘Excellent,...