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There are only two sorts of men, Hamilton—men of light and men of darkness.
You were incomplete—I knew that. You were mainly concerned with
yourself. But you were a man of light, and that’s why I chose you. (YLD, 235)
At this point the conventional critical analysis that Billy Kwan becomes disillusioned with
himself and his world is undeniable, and when he says ‘you were a man of light’, as if
Hamilton, in choosing to go to the highlands instead of to Jill, is now a man of darkness, Kwan
is judging himself just as harshly.
Most Western readers might recoil and take Kwan’s words as a sign of megalomania,
but in the Eastern tradition this is no more than a stark statement of the profound relationship
between the Guru and his disciple. Karan Singh notes how in ‘the Upanishads the Guru uses
the term “Saumya” for the disciple, meaning “dearly beloved”; they looked upon their disciples
as even more close to them than their own sons, because whereas the physical father gives only
physical birth it is the Guru who gives us the real spiritual birth’. He stresses the centrality of
this relationship, expressed in what he calls ‘one of the most moving verses in the Bhagavad
Gita’ (Karan Singh, 5):
I bow before thee, I prostrate in adoration; and I beg they grace, O glorious
Lord! As a father to his son, as a friend to his friend, as a lover to his beloved,
be gracious unto me, O God. (BG, 11:44)
Friendship can indeed be one of the strongest bonds possible, reaching beyond the limits
of the father and son relationship, and for Billy and Hamilton, as for the Guru and his Saumya,
and for Krishna and Arjuna, the bond reaches even to the plane of the lover to his beloved.
‘This is what makes it so significant. It is a relationship of trust, faith and devotion. Krishna is
urging his friend, not threatening him’ (Karan Singh, 5). Billy’s seemingly threatening, angry,
hurt words are a cry in the encroaching dark urging Hamilton, once and for all, to listen, for he
senses that it is critical that Guy open himself to his eternal soul. Billy is so desperate because
he knows that, in order to open himself to his own soul, he needs his ‘other half’ to accompany
him.
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