Here’s a story. Once upon a time, very recently, there was an old man who would give his hair to the birds on his farm for them to make their nests. It seemed completely cuckoo to those who caught him in the act. “Is he out of his mind!” exclaimed an incredulous visitor to the old man’s wife, who probably laughed the histrionics away. Because…how do you explain?

How do you communicate in words the truth that you are just an extension of all sentient and non-sentient beings, which you term “Nature”? There’s nothing you own that doesn’t also belong to the other. And if truth be told, and accepted, what you are is constantly brought into being by the all the “otherness”. One could liken it to a cat’s cradle. One part of the pattern comes into being because of another. You move one thread, the design changes. You move one finger the whole web is tugged. All because it is one continuous whole and very absorbedly in love with its entirety. But, the ordinary mind resorts to the abstract act of “separating” this oneness of experience into bite-sized pieces of information, it just seems too overwhelming. It’s another point altogether that this web of Existence is self-operating. There’s nothing that needs to be broken down to survive. In fact, the more you break it down, the more you feel isolated, afraid.

Coming back to the story of the old man: He preferred being out of his mind, where out of the mind meant free of separation from his environment. To him, it was a natural system springing from the simplest knowledge that to live is to live large. Large, not in the sense of wielding worldly power, but large as in an expanded sense of being. Material grandeur does indeed bring a certain kind of confidence, but that kind has a shelf life. There comes a day when, no matter what you put on the shelf, it stops affording you even the smallest degree of pleasure. Or, as in many cases, the shelves are suddenly left empty and all you now have is your naked, bewildered self.

But the old man lived in no fear of shelves. Fortunately for him, and much more for those who came to know him, his being grew to touch the self of the forests, together with all that lived in it.  Over the years, all that he came to imbibe from Nature, found a place so deep in his knowing, that, when he fell down a hillside one afternoon, his body hugged itself into a ball, quite like a Panda’s, and gently rolled all the way down till he came to a standstill at the bottom – as though it was the most natural thing to do for a man when he falls. Become a panda. Then, he merely stood up, dusted his pants, and walked on. Not one broken bone, not one torn ligament.

We go about searching the web, rummaging through bookshops and libraries to study the ways of the ancients. We think that shamans have tricks. But, it’s quite simple: All that we breathe, observe, allow and honour becomes us. The macro awakens in the micro bit by bit, stretching and yawning like a beautiful, stunning, majestic god if you but slow down to connect. You become fearless. Your awareness takes the fluid shape of the whole, which spontaneously guides, protects and keeps you. Just so, the bear, the reindeer, the moose, the blackbird, the squirrel, the night sky, the rain and snow, and the spruces and pines, and the soil…all of it had become one with the old man’s sense, his knowing and his body. He had become a living extension of it. And that is love.

And so, he refused to name books to read when asked, spoke little and stayed away from social gatherings. “Nature, every day, is new. I know nothing about it. It’s too big”, he said in reply to a question about it and returned to what was at hand. In short, he refused to provide or be part of substitutes of the original experience. When he wasn’t farming or hunting, or looking through herbs and roots, he bent over paintings, sketches and wood carvings of the forests and its myriad forms of life. And he didn’t make them surreal or abstract. A branch was exactly that branch and no other, with every knob, gnarl and twist in its body being irreplaceable. A bear on the ridge was a bear just as he saw it carry its muscle and form with that slow, steady power. The magnificence of things lay in the current inside them, which produced the non-different form. There’s nothing left to add to what’s already extraordinary, and that’s why it must remain what it is. Simple. Ordinary. Accessible.

When one is so utterly attuned to the flow of Existence, it becomes clear that its two polarities of personal survival and empathy for the other, live and/or let live, are eternally engaged in a delicate dance. To survive, humans not only take more than we give, but also what we cannot give: LIFE. How do you unpack that kind of taking? The old man answered, “It should always cost you to take a life. It should always hurt to kill an animal…” Why must it hurt? So that you don’t become dead to another’s dying, another’s sacrifice, and, thus, know that you owe them. Cost. To be aware of the fact that you aren’t entitled. You may never take more than what you truly need; never waste what you take, but honour it by using every last bit; never kill the first thing you see for it may be the last of its kind. And that also means that you may not hunt what’s healthy (or a child or a mother) and is needed for maintaining balance in Nature. Take only what’s hurt, old or ill, and is dropping out from the cycle of life naturally. And so, “Why run or be afraid of the animal? If it’s healthy, you won’t hunt it. If it’s dying, what’s there to run from?” said the old man.

Being aware of the process of Nature eliminates fear. Once you relax, hunger loosens its grip on you. And when you are not hungry, whether in the body or in the ego, you can just be “with IT”, instead of against IT”. Indigenous people from everywhere, since ancient times, make offerings to the spirits of the forests, rivers, seas and Earth from the hunt, the gathering, the produce. That’s simply an acknowledgement of being one with IT. That’s man’s role in continuity, in the act of balancing. The other must prosper for you to prosper. It should always cost you…

But the old man’s idea of being sensitive wasn’t limited to hunting. It extended to the dignity of being. Once, when he was a young father, there naturally came a day when his little girl began to wonder about homosexual relationships. Were they alright? Wasn’t there anything funny about it? That day, in the forest (and perhaps many times later) he pointed out to her a pair of deer, both male, displaying same-sex sexual behaviour, and said that same-sex activity, courtship, pair bonding, and affection is very much in and of Nature. It’s there in birds, marine animals and many species across the planet, and, therefore, nothing to be questioned or ridiculed. The girl saw the deer, utterly innocent and comfortable in Nature, just the way they were. Here was dignity of being from what was made plain to her eyes in the kingdom of Nature, so different from the separateness in all the man-made systems.

If you were to, thus, know and become open to the pulse of Existence…
if you could celebrate the fact that the flow of life is too big to be known, boxed, controlled…
if you were to find out that to be humble is to be free to be yourself…
you would learn that the only moral principle one need adhere to is…
Oneness. Thou shalt not see, feel or act separate, or higher, or lower.

The old man, so vast that he couldn’t be contained any longer, is now no more. He flew out of the remaining constraints of life on July 20th, 2023. His name, which seldom mattered to him, but which everyone takes with reverence and love, was Rolf Ilher. His daughter and my friend, Tove Elise Ilher, is my connection to his stories and wisdom, and this endless love he was always in. I am certain that he is everywhere. He is with the fox that would cuddle up on his chest for warmth in winter. He is where the white wagtails have made their nests with his hair. He’s there where the deer walk together in harmony. He’s in the hunter watching the young and bold graze safely. He’s in the painting of the bear on the ridge. He’s there in the alive and breathing forest floor of moss and mushrooms, just where we kneel and kiss the ground, so that more like him may come. 

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