Spheres of life

(spheres)

Schizophrenia is an awful disease that you lose you control of your mind.  You can’t comprehend what is real or fantasy.  The spheres of your mind merge together with life and imagination so there would not be that balancing line between the two, but just a bunch of grey.  This is Eliot Crane’s story in The Harmony of the Spheres

It’s a story by Salman Rushdie in the book East, West. There is multiple meaning of The Harmony of the spheres, the spheres of our mind, of love, of lives.  The main character is Eliot Crane is a schizophrenic about demons tormenting him.  He is a writer, an occultist (knowledge of the hidden), a student of the dark arts, a husband to Lucy, and friends with Rushdie and Mala.

One of the spheres in Eliot’s life was his mind. Our brain is made up of two spheres a right and left sphere that contain creativity and rational thinking.  It’s bunch of spongy grey matter with billions of neurons that need to be trained and strengthen.  As people get older they tend to lose their minds. “Why do we lose our minds? A simple chemical imbalance” was Eliot’s view on the matter (134).  Eliot strained his mind pushed it to the max and eventually lost it with the many thoughts of his hidden knowledge, aliens, devils, fantasies.  He lost balance of himself and lost control.  When you lose control something takes hold and controls you. This is where his schizophrenia comes in,  the mind needs a supplement to survive thus the chemical change and the creation of Eliot’s demons.  Schizophrenics eventually lose complete control.  Eliot lost complete control when he took his own life.   But before he took his life, love was a motivating factor to keep going.

In a conversation with Lucy “who know what makes people friends?  Something in the way they move.  That way they sing off key “This is why Lucy was attracted to Eliot but it is also the reason Eliot was attracted to doctor Mala and why Lucy was attracted to Rushdie. There a love sphere or affair to be direct, that develops in this story between Lucy & Rushdie, and Eliot & Mala that ends with the fatal line of the “collapse of harmony, the demolition of the spheres of my heart.  Those weren’t fantasies”, Mala said. (146). I guess that is a good closing line, the story starts with destruction and ends with it but in the middle its constructive.

This story is showing that life is about balance within these spheres of life. Life is not living from one extreme to the next, its about living in that place here you are in a happy medium. No matter where you or who you are there is always going to be binaries of balance:  good- bad, life – death, madness – sanity, and disturbance – harmony. Eliot lost his mind from living in both extremes he lost his balance and eventually lost control. The key to Balance is to be in between each of them binaries.