You have heard of the parable of the blind men and the elephant, yes?

Let me tell you of another: The Blind Men and the Sphere.

Once there were seven blind men expelled from seven lands, each bordering a great desert. Driven into the howling wilderness, each man wandered alone, further into the endless cracked earth and rolling dunes, until one night, they all converged at once at an enormous, singular sphere standing in the center of the desert.

Each heard the shuffling footsteps of the others as they approached the softly humming object. They called out to one another, but none knew the language of the other. As each man eventually reached out to touch the curiously warm, smooth thing, the humming grew louder. Very quickly, it grew so loud that it drowned out all the ambient sounds of the desert until each of the blind men could hear only his own heart beating softly and rapidly amid the humming.

His heartbeat and thoughts—not only his own, however, but the thoughts of the other blind men as well. In this dark, buzzing cavern of mind, each could now also understand the language of the others as if it were his own.

Said the first the the second, "What is this here in the center of the desert? It is so strange and round."

Replied the second, "I do not know. I have never before felt anything that could be compared to it."

Said the third to the others, "I also have never encountered such an uncanny thing in all my days in the seven lands and beyond. Where could it have come from?"

Replied the fourth to the third, "The smoothness I feel is indeed unlike all other smoothness I have felt—smoother than the most precious silk and gentler than the finest leather, yet absolutely unyielding to the pressing of my fingers."

Said the fifth to the fourth, "And the warmth, what is it? It is frigid this autumn night and the sun has long set. It cannot still be warmed by the sun."

Replied the sixth to the rest, "The longer I touch it, the warmer I feel across the whole of my body, but also the more dread I feel growing in my stomach, and a writhing discomfort in my breast with it."

The seventh, quiet until now, then spoke, "My brothers, I believe I know what this is."

The six, stunned into silence, were at once shocked further by the abrupt quieting of the sphere and return of the sounds of the desert.

The seventh continued, but spoke again now in his own language words unintelligible to the others.

The sphere then grew so hot that the men recoiled, holding their singed hands. It continued to heat itself until the men were forced to back away, so as to not be scalded by the still, silent blaze. Sizzling they then heard as the sphere began to melt the sand on which it stood. Yelping, gasping, and fumbling backwards, the men could smell a growing pond of molten glass all around the strange orb, boiling violently as the sphere then sank into the earth. Prayers were mumbled and hair was plucked as the men wept in confusion and horror.

A warm, sweet easterly wind then rose around the men, comforting them enough for a light slumber to descend, ushering them again into the cavern of mind.

The men could now see for the first time in their lives. They saw each other, shocked at the forms of faces which they had hitherto experienced only as mounds and crevasses of flesh underneath their hands. They saw that they were arranged, standing in a circle, around what they realized was a small campfire, reduced to embers smoldering silently in the dark. Speechless, each reached a hand toward the fire to confirm the new sensation of seeing, to experience both the heat and sight at once.

A flash of blinding white light from overhead then knocked them to the ground. It was followed a moment later by the deafening blast of some gargantuan horn from all around. After a few moments, they were able to gather their wits amid the powerful ringing in their ears and a familiar yet unfamiliar blind spot now dominating their vision.

The cavern all around them was then lit by a dim and sour red glow from the fire pit at their feet, now a small pile of ash and charcoal. There, high overhead, was the sphere they had met in the desert. It was turning very slowly as it bathed in the crimson glow of the dead fire before them.

The seventh now spoke again, but this time again in a language understood by each of the others.

"My brothers, my friends, children of the Beloved, this is truly the great heart and hearth of this world. It beats and moves and warms as a heart of flesh, but it is much more: though the fire at our feet is extinguished, it glows still, and shows the heart above: perfect and simple and perfectly simple, feeding the whole of this strange place with its life. I do not understand how or why we have been brought here, why we were made to sojourn into the desert, why it was each of us from our own land—why it was each of us and not some other instead—but I feel a serenity and certainty at the threshold of this heart and hearth that I have never known in my many years. Surely this is the Center at the Center, that which will never give way, the core and essence of all creatures both living and dead, created and uncreated: the ladder to the upper realms which we might ascend. What say you? Shall we climb? Do you dare?"

Hearing these words from the seventh, the six others glanced at one another. They each saw the same look upon the others: one of furrowed brows and subtle frowns, of consternation and resentment. A few began to groan and speak in whispers. They eyed the seventh sideways, through suspicious, squinted lids. Soft and sardonic laughter came next, some pointing at the seventh, gesticulating mockingly.

Seeing the disdain and hearing the derision, knowing now that his words had fallen on ears deaf to what they would not believe nor even consider, the seventh reached his hands into the air and grabbed hold of some fixed, invisible rod. He proceeded to climb upward into thin air toward the sphere above.

Slack-jawed, slavering, and silent, the six below looked on in a new and far more distressed disbelief. When the seventh reached the sphere and disappeared into it, the groaning and whispering quickly resumed. As did the looks of suspicion, now directed upward at a sphere they could no longer see, having ascended beyond into the dark above. Also returned: the sarcastic, belittling snickering and the gesticulations of madness and stupidity. In the end, they laughed themselves to sleep, drunk with a bitter and jealous cynicism.

They awoke to a green sunrise in the cold desert dawn, again invisible to them. Rising and brushing sand off of their robes, they bade goodbye in their six languages, again garbled and meaningless. They turned away, each deciding to go his own way in search of something else, leaving behind a perfectly circular, cobalt-blue mirror in the sand, glinting in the slanted sunlight.