The Razor’s Edge: Part 6, Chapter 8 Summary & Analysis

Larry travels to Travancore to study in the ashram of Shri Ganesha. At the ashram, Larry reads and meditates. He finds Shri Ganesha’s saintliness extraordinary. When he has spent two years at the ashram, Larry goes to a cabin in the mountains owned by the forest service. Larry wants to spend his birthday there. While there, he experiences a moment of rapture in which everything that once confused him becomes clear. He says he doesn’t want to think of the moment as one of ultimate illumination, but that he is overwhelmed by his sense of the moment’s reality. He thinks it’s the same kind of experience that mystics have had across the globe throughout time. 

Larry tells Somerset he still feels the sense of peace and joy he felt during that moment of rapture and that the vision of the world’s beauty he had then remains with him now. After his experience of ecstasy, Larry leaves the ashram. A week later, he arrives in Marseilles. Somerset says that Larry initially began his study to try and find a solution to the “problem of evil.” Larry says the best answer he’s arrived at is that evil is naturally, and inevitably, correlated with good; you can’t have one without the other. Larry says he doesn’t find the idea altogether satisfying, though.

In Paris, Larry tells Somerset that he now plans to return to the U.S. to live and work as a mechanic. He plans to give up the income he has received over all of these years. He thinks that in the U.S. he can be a model to show people that money isn’t the highest good; instead, Larry says, people should aim for “self-perfection.” He says that once he’s had his fill of being a mechanic, he plans to become a truck driver so he can travel. After that, he wants to drive a taxi in New York City, so he can have access to the city’s libraries. Somerset and Larry have spoken all night, and the café is now serving breakfast. Larry says he also plans to write a book, which some friends will publish with a small press in Paris.