He has his hands in the air, his eyes closed, and although he has not raised his voice the whole room has gone quiet. But once again, the silence into which he speaks is not a silence of fear or awe, but a kind of hunger. The movements of his body and the notes of his voice are signs, and their forcefulness satisfies something in his followers, an ongoing need to shore up the wall they are building around themselves, around their ability to believe they are particular instances of eternal symbols first, and people with memories of another life a distant second.