Chapter 1 Summary

Ishmael: An Adventure of the Mind and Spirit shows an enormous educated, telepathic gorilla, Ishmael, mentoring an idealistic but somewhat dense middle-aged writer. Ishmael helps him understand how the majority of humankind is enacting a story that will destroy the world, while a tiny minority lives in communion with the community of life and can point to a brighter future.

The narrator is furious, reading an ad for a teacher seeking a pupil earnestly desirous of saving the world. He is indignant because since the 1970s, he has wanted such a teacher. In his mid-teens, he sees the "children's revolt" fade away, grows disillusioned and bewildered, but unable to be merely cynical. He longs for a Leo in The Journey to the East, whose wisdom author Hermann Hesse cannot reveal because he does not know it. The narrator stops his foolish quest when...