Inspirational Reading from "Ka, Stories of the Mind and Gods of India" by Roberto Calasso

The first equivalences were the stampads that flashed across Prajapati's mind as he was dueling with Death. A stampad is a 'falling together,' a chain of equivalences. How did they reveal themselves? Prajapati was staring straight ahead, at Death. All around him, the world. The two combatants gazed at each other, studied each other. But didn't move. Each was surrounded by a supportive army. Wooden spoons, a wooden sword, bowls: such was Prajapati's army. Frayed a frail. Around Death were a lute, an anklet, some powder puffs for making up.
How long would this tension last? As he waited Prajapati ran through everything that served as a frame to Death, a frame that amounts to everything that is. It was a long way to run. He penetrated the frame, in its scrolls and flourishes-and the density of decoration would sometimes hide Death from him. He thought: "This is like that, this corresponds to that, this is equivalent to that, this it that." A vibration, a tension, a euphoria flooded his mind. If this is that, then that corresponds to this other thing-he went on. Slender bonds wrapped themselves like ribbons around this and that. The bonds stretched, invisible to many, but not to the one who put them there. With a sentinel's eye, Prajapati went on watching Death. But with the eye that wanders, that evokes images, numbers, and words, he went on getting things to "fall together," sometimes things that were far apart, getting them to coincide. And the further apart they were, more exhilarated he felt. The existent world-prickly, numb, empty-let itself be covered, taken, gathered, enveloped, in the mesh of a fabric. Oh, still a loose mesh, for sure.....Yet this made it all the more exciting, that the mesh was at once so loose and so fine, as though to avoid upsetting the blind breathing of the whole. But Death? Still crouched there, waiting. Prajapati thought: "If he kills me, what will be left?" Until now, this thought had terrified him. Prajapati knew that everything proceeded from himself. Imagining himself as not existing meant imagining all existence nonexistent. But now he looked around. Then he saw himself from without: an exhausted, weary, wrinkled old being. All about him, everything was still new, so that looking around he could now see how every dapple of vegetation, every outline of a rock, concealed a number, a word, an equivalence: a mental state that clung and mingled with another state. As if every state were a number. As if every number were a state. This was the first equivalence, origin of all others. Then Prajapati thought: "If I were gone, perhaps these things would no longer fall together? Perhaps the sampads would dissolve? But how could Death hurt the equivalences? How could she strike them?" Where was their boy, for her to wound? They occupied no space, they couldn't be touched. They surfaced in the mind, but where from? As he thought all this, Prajapati felt a fever, release. He thought: "If the sampads elude me, who am myself thinking them, they will be all the more elusive to Death, who knows nothing of them. Death can kill me, but she cannot kill the equivalences." He wasn't aware that a clear, dry voice was issuing from his mouth. He was speaking to Death, after their long silence. Prajapati said: "I've beaten you. Go ahead and kill me. Whether I am alive or not, the equivalences shall be forever." -Roberto Calasso.