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Part 6, Chapter 5
Themes
Key
LitCharts assigns a color and icon to each theme in The Razor’s Edge, which you can use to track the themes throughout the work.
Wisdom and the Meaning of Life
Social Norms and Conformity
Trauma and Self-Destruction
Snobbishness, Social Status, and Cosmopolitanism
Truth and the Problem of Evil
Summary
Analysis
Larry arrives in Bombay and then travels with a Swami he has met to Benares. In Benares, Larry studies Hinduism and learns about the idea of the transmigration of souls. He says that once, while he is meditating in the ashram, he sees a vision of a procession of people and believes they may have been a subconscious recollection of his past lives. He says the ultimate goal in Hinduism is to find liberation from “the bondage of rebirth,” which entails renouncing egoism to become one with the Absolute. The Absolute is “reality,” Larry says, and it is ineffable; you can’t explain it in words and can only hint at what it is by saying what it isn’t.
Larry’s explanation that you can only hint at what the “Absolute” is by saying what it isn’t is an “apophatic” approach to understanding divinity or God. That approach roughly posits that because the Absolute is beyond human perception, its essence cannot be captured by human language. That apophatic approach exists across time periods and spiritual traditions and can be found, for example, in Plato’s work as well as in the Upanishads of Hinduism.
Themes
