In J D Salinger's wonderful book Franny and Zooey the main protagonist begins in the bath and by the end of the book he has progressed to the bedroom. This is the main protagonist, the book’s hero, the central action. Along the way he is thwarted variously by his mother’s controlling insensitivity, his sister’s attachments, and his maudlin memories. Toward the end of the book, having reached his bedroom, he phones his sister Franny (who is in the next room!) and pretends that he is at the appointment he will inevitably miss due to his prolonged procrastination.

Zooey is an outstanding example of a man caught in habit, an automaton dominated by reaction, his rajas dwarfed by his tamas, his yang by his yin. Forces of destruction are his only hope, his only resort. His disempowerment, weakness, and physical illness all define his fully compromised character. He is caught in a pre-natal obstruction, the Sartre-esque state of "no exit," of no escape from the ambivalence in the womb caught between bliss and catastrophe.

Zooey inhabits a schizoid world where through his intense withdrawal he is disengaged and effectively out of relationship with the world, its inhabitants, and its events. Feelings and responses and spontaneous relationship are anathema to him. He reacts to the objects of his mind, but only the safe ones that have no real meaning or if they have meaning, they have no real visceral, experiential reality and affect. This fantasy world must be destroyed for Zooey to live.

Death is a great shock, as is the passing of a loved one, the end of a long spell living in the same location, the end of a career when you are made redundant. We become cushioned and secure in habit, in the repetition of the same action, same friends, same environment, same tasks.

Real spirituality on the other hand is vital, spontaneous, and most of all surrendered. Nothing may ever be the same, not because it may not be the same, but because when you have entered Reality it simply isn’t the same. Nothing is repeated: even in nature there are no two leaves or stones alike. Neither are there two moments the same. This is not because there is a spiritual significance to apparently infinite differentiation (there isn’t, because it's merely relative), but because there is only one eternal moment and from the point of view of that moment you will see from relative reality everything changing, always different, never repeating. You seek the solace of habit to reverse this relative truth, but behind this is the even deeper truth to which you are far more resistant—the eternal moment through which you enter into unchanging, deathless Reality.

BLOG entry #63