GRGR(16) - Kirghiz Light

[rj]

DMo
> But why
> does he forget everything?  Is it his single-minded
> mission which blinds his perception and thus memory of
> the great beauty here?  Was it all those opium trips? 
> Or was it the Light itself which blinded his memory,
> took back the beauty he was not ready to see?

"Seems this Tchitcherine maintains a harem, a girl in every rocket-town
in the Zone." (290.17) He could have stayed with Galina and Luba, I
guess; he could have stayed with Geli and Wernher, too. I think that
that's part of the aqyn's song (ninth verse). But he rides out to the
Kirghiz Light with Dzaqyp. He is a truthseeker. 

He does not forget everything straight away. When he returns to the
world of men he gradually loses sight of the memory of what he almost
saw/experienced. 

Tchitchy cannot let go of his conditioning: his ego-centred materialism
(stenography, pride, "mindless pleasures"). He needs to become like
Slothrop -- a blank slate, tabula rasa -- to experience the numinous
vision and be reborn.

I think the opium trips gave him the insight, and set him on his way in
the first place. But I agree that the Light blinded him; not in an
active, malicious, volitional way, however. His "heart" just wasn't
ready. The Light's always there, as Doug said.

best