There was once a man who approached the Sage on the Mountain and asked if he could see the spirits of the dead. When the Sage asked why he would want this, the man replied that he often felt the presence of spirits in his home, and wanted to see them to know what they wanted. The Sage warned that the dead keep their own ways, their own counsel, and that the man would regret his request. Confident, the man insisted he would not. The Sage gave him an obol coin and told him to place it under his pillow, and that his wish would be granted.
A week later, the man returned. He had clearly not slept and barely ate in the intervening time, and the effort of re-climbing the mountain had nearly ended him. As the Sage nursed him, the man begged to return his gift, to unsee the dead. The Sage asked why, and the man spoke.
“The dead crawl and twist and writhe everywhere, spirits laid across the land so thick that there no nowhere they do not rise to the heights of mountains or beyond. Humans, yes, but also beasts and insects and all the life that has passed from this place since the beginning of all life. They gnash and wail silently in torment, trapped amid the crush of their fellows, neither understanding nor comprehending the horror in which they find themselves. Ours is a red world, a dead world, for the spirits outnumber us by legions to one, and I do not wish to know this any further.”
The Sage of the Mountain asked if the man now understood why his request had been foolish. The man readily agreed, and added that the experience had made him fear death ever more. The Sage offered him a second obol to place beneath his pillow, but the man died from exhaustion and starvation before he could use it. Over the man’s funeral pyre, the Sage said the following:
“It is not the living’s place to know of the dead, nor is it the dead’s place to be known by the living. Where he saw horror, perhaps the dead do not. He knows now the truth, though, as only the dead can truly know their own.”
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