Changing Planes

Here are the Eleven Sayings of the Elder of Isu, collected over four years by a devotee from Ohio, who had already spent six years learning the language from the children of the Isu Group. Months of silence occurred between most of these statements, and two years between the fifth and sixth.

1. Not there.

2. It is almost ready [or] Be ready for it soon.

3. Unexpected!

4. It will never cease.

5. Yes.

6. When?

7. It is very good.

8. Perhaps.

9. Soon.

10. Hot! [or] Very warm!

11. It will notecase.

The devotee wove these eleven sayings into a coherent spiritual statement or testament which he understood the Elder to have been making, little by little, during the last four years of his life. The Ohio Reading of the Sayings of the Elder of Isu is as follows:

(1) What we seek is not in any object or experience of our mortal life. We live among appearances, on the verge of the Spiritual Truth. (2) We must be as ready for it as it is ready for us, for (3) it will come when we least expect it. Our perception of the Truth is sudden as a lightning flash, but (4) the Truth itself is eternal and unchanging. (5) Indeed we must positively and hopefully, in a spirit of affirmation, (6) continually ask when, when shall we find what we seek? (7) For the Truth is the medicine for our soul, the knowledge of absolute goodness. (8, 9) It may come very soon. Perhaps it is coming even now in this moment. (10) Its warmth and brightness are as those of the sun, but the sun will perish (11) and the Truth will not perish. Never will the warmth, the brightness, the goodness of the Truth cease or fail us.

Another interpretation of the Sayings may be made by referring to the circumstances in which the Elder spoke, faithfully recorded by the devotee from Ohio, whose patience was equaled only by the Elder’s:

1. Spoken in an undertone as the Elder looked through a chest of clothing and ornaments.

2. Spoken to a group of children on the morning of a ceremony.

3. Said with a laugh in greeting the Elder’s younger sister, returned from a long trip.

4. Spoken the day after the burial of the Elder’s sister.

5. Said while embracing the Elder’s brother-in-law some days after the funeral.

6. Asked of an Asonu “doctor” who was making a “spirit-body” drawing in white and black sand for the Elder. These drawings seem to be both curative and diagnostic, but we know very little about them. The observer states that the doctor’s answer was a short curving line drawn outward from the navel of the spirit-body figure. This, however, may be only the observer’s reading of what was not an answer at all.

7. Said to a child who had woven a reed mat.

8. Spoken in answer to a young grandchild who asked, “Will you be at the big feast, Grandmother?”

9. Spoken in answer to the same child, who asked, “Are you going to be dead like Great-Auntie?”

10. Said to a baby who was toddling towards a firepit where the flames were invisible in the sunlight.

11. Last words, spoken the day before the Elder’s death.

The last six Sayings were all spoken in the last half year of the Elder’s life, as if the approach of death had made the Elder positively loquacious. Five of the Sayings were spoken to, or in at least in the presence of, young children who were still at the talking stage.

Speech from an adult must be very impressive to an Asonu child. Like the foreign linguists, Asonu babies learn the language by listening to older children. The mother and other adults encourage the child to speak only by attentive listening and prompt, affectionate, wordless response.

The Asonu live in close-knit, extended-family groups, in frequent contact with other groups. Their pasturing life, following the great flocks of anamanu which furnish them wool, leather, milk, and meat, leads them on a ceaseless seasonal nomadic circuit within a vast shared territory of mountains and foothills. Families frequently leave their groups to go wandering and visiting. At the great festivals and ceremonies of healing and renewal many groups come together for days or weeks, exchanging hospitality. No hostile relations between groups are apparent, and in fact no observer has reported seeing adult Asonu fight or quarrel. Arguments clearly are out of the question.

Children from two to six years old chatter to each other constantly; they argue, wrangle, bicker, quarrel, and sometimes come to blows. As they reach six or seven they begin to speak less and quarrel less. By the time they are eight or nine most of them are very shy of words and reluctant to answer a question except by gesture. They have learned to quietly evade inquiring tourists and linguists with notebooks and recording devices. By adolescence they are as silent and as peaceable as the adults.