Note: Spoilers herein!
I read a review that said that THE RAZOR'S EDGE is about the ways people find happiness. Now that I think about it, I suppose that's right. There is Larry, who is seeking -- I won't say "Truth" because he doesn't really know what he is seeking until he finds it -- but he is only one character, and arguably not the main one. The other characters seek wealth, attention from those who "matter," accumulation of things -- all in their own ways trying to find satisfaction
But Larry is the one we are concerned with here. He is the one who is not happy to live an ordinary life, and thus the one that no one understands. He tramps around Europe and bumps into this or that wisdom and finally ends up in India with Advaita saints. He finds what he is looking for and since he no longer needs to be "somebody" (unlike all the other characters), he goes back to America with the intention to become a taxi driver.
Does he get enlightened? He describes his illumination to the narrator (a fictional Maugham): "I had a strange sensation, a tingling that arose in my feet and traveled up to my head, and I felt as though I were suddenly released from my body and as pure spirit partook of a loveliness I had never conceived." (See my extended quotation on my other blog, miracleofawakening.blogspot.com.) Is this a dissolution of the self? I'm not sure. The rest of the extended account sounds like it is written by someone who merely imagines what enlightenment must be like. That is, all these wonderful experiences occur to the self. This is the one thing that people who imagine what getting enlightened would be like can't conceive of: that the person who wants this disappears!
