Books: AE in the Irish Theosophist
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George William Russell >> AE in the Irish Theosophist
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If these things were shadows, the earth and the forests he returned
to, viewed at evening, seemed still more unreal, the mere dusky
flutter of a moth's wings in space. Filmy and evanescent, if he
had sunk down as through a transparency into the void, it would not
have been wonderful. Parvati turned homeward, still half in trance:
as he threaded the dim alleys he noticed not the flaming eyes that
regarded him from the gloom; the serpents rustling amid the
undergrowths; the lizards, fire-flies, insects, the innumerable
lives of which the Indian forest was rumourous; they also were
but shadows. He paused half unconsciously at the village, hearing
the sound of human voices, of children at play. He felt a throb
of pity for these tiny being who struggled and shouted, rolling
over each other in ecstasies of joy; the great illusion had indeed
devoured them before whom the Devas once were worshipers. Then
close beside him he heard a voice; its low tones, its reverence
soothed him: there was something akin to his own nature in it;
it awakened him fully. A little crowd of five or six people were
listening silently to an old man who read from a palm-leaf manuscript.
Parvati knew his order by the orange-coloured robes he wore; a
Bhikshu of the new faith. What was his delusion?
The old man lifted his head for a moment as the ascetic came closer,
and then he continued as before. He was reading the "Legend of
the Great King of Glory." Parvati listened to it, comprehending
with the swift intuition and subtlety of a mystic the inner meaning
of the Wonderful Wheel, the elephant Treasure, the Lake and palace
of Righteousness. He followed the speaker, understanding all
until he came to the meditation of the King: then he heard with
vibrating heart, how "the Great King of Glory entered the golden
chamber, and set himself down on the silver couch. And he let his
mind pervade one quarter of the world with thoughts of Love: and
so the second quarter, and so the third, and so the fourth. And
thus the whole wide world, above below, around and everywhere,
did he continue to pervade with heart of Love, far-reaching, grown
great, and beyond measure." When the old Bhikshu had ended, Parvati
rose up, and went back again into the forest. He had found the
secret of the True--to leave behind the vistas, and enter into the
Being. Another legend rose up in his mind, a fairy legend of
righteousness, expanding and filling the universe, a vision beautiful
and full of old enchantment; his heart sang within him. He seated
himself again under the banyan tree; he rose up in soul; he saw
before him images, long-forgotten, of those who suffer in the
sorrowful old earth; he saw the desolation and loneliness of old age,
the insults to the captive, the misery of the leper and outcast,
the chill horror and darkness of life in a dungeon. He drank in
all their sorrow. For his heart he went out to them. Love, a
fierce and tender flame arose; pity, a breath from the vast;
sympathy, born of unity. This triple fire sent forth its rays;
they surrounded those dark souls; they pervaded them; they beat
down oppression.
While Parvati, with spiritual magic, sent forth the healing powers,
far away at that moment, in his hall, a king sat enthroned. A
captive was bound before him; bound, but proud, defiant, unconquerable
of soul. There was silence in the hall until the king spake the doom,
the torture, for this ancient enemy. The king spake: "I had thought
to do some fierce thing to thee, and so end thy days, my enemy.
But, I remember with sorrow, the great wrongs we have done to each
other, and the hearts made sore by our hatred. I shall do no more
wrong to thee. Thou art free to depart. Do what thou wilt. I will
make restitution to thee as far as may be for thy ruined state."
Then the soul no might could conquer was conquered, and the knees
were bowed; his pride was overcome. "My brother!" he said, and
could say no more.
To watch for years a little narrow slit high up in the dark cell,
so high that he could not reach up and look out; and there to see
daily a little change from blue to dark in the sky had withered
that prisoner's soul. The bitter tears came no more; hardly even
sorrow; only a dull, dead feeling. But that day a great groan
burst from him: he heard outside the laugh of a child who was playing
and gathering flowers under the high, grey walls: then it all came
over him, the divine things missed, the light, the glory, and the
beauty that the earth puts forth for her children. The narrow slit
was darkened: half of a little bronze face appeared.
"Who are you down there in the darkness who sigh so? Are you all
alone there? For so many years! Ah, poor man! I would come down
to you if I could, but I will sit here and talk to you for a while.
Here are flowers for you," and a little arm showered them in handfuls;
the room was full of the intoxicating fragrance of summer. Day
after day the child came, and the dull heart entered into human
love once more.
At twilight, by a deep and wide river, sat an old woman alone, dreamy,
and full of memories. The lights of the swift passing boats, and
the lights of the stars, were just as in childhood and the old
love-time. Old, feeble, it was time for her to hurry away from
the place which changed not with her sorrow.
"Do you see our old neighbour there?" said Ayesha to her lover.
"They say she once was as beautiful as you would make me think I
am now. How lonely she must be! Let us come near and speak to her";
and the lover went gladly. Though they spoke to each other rather
than to her, yet something of the past--which never dies when love,
the immortal, has pervaded it--rose up again as she heard their voices.
She smiled, thinking of years of burning beauty.
A teacher, accompanied by his chelas, was passing by the wayside
where a leper was sitting. The teacher said, "Here is our brother
whom we may not touch. But he need not be shut out from truth.
We may sit down where he can listen." He sat down on the wayside
beside the leper, and his chelas stood around him. He spoke words
full of love, kindliness, and pity, the eternal truths which make
the soul grow full of sweetness and youth. A small old spot began
to glow in the heart of the leper, and the tears ran down his
withered cheeks.
All these were the deeds of Parvati, the ascetic; and the Watcher
who was over him from all eternity made a great stride towards
that soul.
--November 15, 1893
A Talk by the Euphrates
Priest Merodach walked with me at evening along the banks of the
great river.
"You feel despondent now," he said, "but this was inevitable. You
looked for a result equal to your inspiration. You must learn to
be content with that alone. Finally an inspiration will come for
every moment, and in every action a divine fire reveal itself."
"I feel hopeless now. Why is this? Wish and will are not less
strong than before."
"Because you looked for a result beyond yourself, and, attached
to external things, your mind drew to itself subtle essences of
earth which clouded it. But there is more in it than that. Nature
has a rhythm, and that part of us which is compounded of her elements
shares in it. You were taught that nature is for ever becoming:
the first emanation in the great deep is wisdom: wisdom changes
into desire, and an unutterable yearning to go outward darkens the
primeval beauty. Lastly, the elements arise, blind, dark, troubled.
Nature in them imagines herself into forgetfulness. This rhythm
repeats itself in man: a moment of inspiration--wise and clear,
we determine; then we are seized with a great desire which impels
us to action; the hero, the poet, the lover, all alike listen to
the music of life, and then endeavour to express its meaning in
word or deed; coming in contact with nature, its lethal influence
drowses them; so baffled and forgetful, they wonder where the God is.
To these in some moment the old inspiration returns, the universe is
as magical and sweet as ever, a new impulse is given, and so they
revolve, perverting and using, each one in his own way, the
cosmic rhythm."
"Merodach, what you say seems truth, and leaving aside the cosmic
rhythm, which I do not comprehend, define again for me the three states."
"You cannot really understand the little apart from the great; but,
applying this to your own case, you remember you had a strange
experience, a God seemed to awaken within you. This passed away;
you halted a little while, full of strange longing, eager for the
great; yet you looked without on the hither side of that first moment,
and in this second period, which is interchange and transition, your
longing drew to you those subtle material essences I spoke of, which,
like vapour surround, dull and bewilder the mind with strange
phantasies of form and sensation. Every time we think with longing
of any object, these essences flow to us out of the invisible spheres
and steep us with the dew of matter: then we forget the great, we
sleep, we are dead or despondent as you are despondent."
I sighed as I listened. A watchfulness over momentary desires was
the first step; I had thought of the tasks of the hero as leading
upwards to the Gods, but this sleepless intensity of will working
within itself demanded a still greater endurance. I neared my
destination; I paused and looked round; a sudden temptation
assailed me; the world was fair enough to live in. Why should I
toil after the far-off glory? Babylon seemed full of mystery, its
temples and palaces steeped in the jewel glow and gloom of evening.
In far-up heights of misty magnificence the plates of gold on the
temples rayed back the dying light: in the deepening vault a starry
sparkle began: an immense hum arose from leagues of populous streets:
the scents of many gardens by the river came over me: I was lulled
by the splash of fountains. Closer I heard voices and a voice I
loved: I listened as a song came
"Tell me, youthful lover, whether
Love is joy or woe?
Are they gay or sad together
On that way who go?"
A voice answered back
"Radiant as a sunlit feather,
Pure and proud they go;
With the lion look together
Glad their faces show."
My sadness departed; I would be among them shortly, and would walk
and whisper amid those rich gardens where beautiful idleness was
always dreaming. Merodach looked at me.
"You will find these thoughts will hinder you much," he said.
"You mean--" I hesitated, half-bewildered, half-amazed. "I say
that a thought such as that which flamed about you just now, driving
your sadness away, will recur again when next you are despondent,
and so you will accustom yourself to find relief on the great quest
by returning to an old habit of the heart, renewing what should be
laid aside. This desire of men and women for each other is the
strongest tie among the many which bind us: it is the most difficult
of all to overcome. The great ones of the earth have passed that
way themselves with tears."
"But surely, Merodach, you cannot condemn what I may say is so much
a part of our nature--of all nature."
"I did not condemn it, when I said it is the strongest tie that
binds us here: it is sin only for those who seek for freedom."
"Merodach, must we then give up love?"
"There are two kinds of love men know of. There is one which begins
with a sudden sharp delight--it dies away into infinite tones of
sorrow. There is a love which wakes up amid dead things: it is
a chill at first, but it takes root, it warms, it expands, it lays
hold of universal joys. So the man loves: so the God loves.
Those who know this divine love are wise indeed. They love not
one or another: they are love itself. Think well over this:
power alone is not the attribute of the Gods; there are no such
fearful spectres in that great companionship. And now, farewell,
we shall meet again."
I watched his departing figure, and then I went on my own way. I
longed for that wisdom, which they only acquire who toil, and strive,
and suffer; but I was full of a rich life which longed for excitement
and fulfilment, and in that great Babylon sin did not declare itself
in its true nature, but was still clouded over by the mantle of
primeval beauty.
--December 15, 1893
The Cave of Lilith
Out of her cave came the ancient Lilith; Lilith the wise; Lilith
the enchantress. There ran a little path outside her dwelling;
it wound away among the mountains and glittering peaks, and before
the door, one of the Wise Ones walked to and fro. Out of her cave
came Lilith, scornful of his solitude, exultant in her wisdom,
flaunting her shining and magical beauty.
"Still alone, star gazer! Is thy wisdom of no avail? Thou hast
yet to learn that I am more powerful knowing the ways of error than
you who know the ways of truth."
The Wise One heeded her not, but walked to and fro. His eyes were
turned to the distant peaks, the abode of his brothers. The
starlight fell about him; a sweet air came down the mountain path,
fluttering his white robe; he did not cease from his steady musing.
Like a mist rising between rocks wavered Lilith in her cave.
Violet, with silvery gleams her raiment; her face was dim; over
her head rayed a shadowy diadem, the something a man imagines over
the head of his beloved---looking closer at her face he would have
seen that this was the crown he reached out to, that the eyes burnt
with his own longing, that the lips were parted to yield to the
secret wishes of his heart.
"Tell me, for I would know, why do you wait so long? I, here in
my cave between the valley and the height blind the eyes of all
who would pass. Those who by chance go forth to you come back to
me again, and but one in ten thousand passes on. My delusions are
sweeter to them than truth. I offer every soul its own shadow;
I pay them their own price. I have grown rich, though the simple
shepards of old gave me birth. Men have made me; the mortals have
made me immortal. I rose up like a vapour from their first dreams,
and every sigh since then and every laugh remains with me. I am
made up of hopes and fears. The subtle princes lay out their plans
of conquest in my cave, and there the hero dreams, and there the
lovers of all time write in flame their history. I am wise, holding
all experience, to tempt, to blind, to terrify. None shall pass by.
Why, therefore, dost thou wait?"
The Wise One looked at her and she shrank back a little, and a
little her silver and violet faded, but out of her cave her voice
still sounded:
"The stars and the starry crown are not yours alone to offer, and
every promise you make, I make also. I offer the good and the bad
indifferently. The lover, the poet, the mystic, and all who would
drink of the first Fountain, I delude with my mirage. I was the
Beatrice who led Dante upward: the gloom was in me, and the glory
was mine also, and he went not out of my cave. The stars and the
shining of heaven were delusions of the infinite I wove about him.
I captured his soul with the shadow of space; a nutshell would
have contained the film. I smote on the dim heart-chords the
manifold music of being. God is sweeter in the human than the
human in God: therefore he rested in me."
She paused a little, and then went on.
"There is that fantastic fellow who slipped by me--could your wisdom
not keep him? He returned to me full of anguish, and I wound my
arms round him like a fair melancholy, and now his sadness is as
sweet to him as hope was before his fall. Listen to his song."
She paused again. A voice came up from the depths chanting a
sad knowledge--
"What of all the will to do?
It has vanished long ago,
For a dream shaft pierced it through
From the unknown Archer's bow.
What of all the soul to think?
Some one offered it a cup
Filled with a diviner drink,
And the flame has burned it up.
What of all the hope to climb?
Only in the self we grope
To the misty end of time;
Truth has put an end to hope.
What of all the heart to love?
Sadder than for will or soul,
No light lured it on above;
Love has found itself the whole."
"Is it not pitiful? I pity only those who pity themselves. Yet
he is mine more surely than ever. This is the end of human wisdom.
How shall he now escape? What shall draw him up?"
"His will shall awaken," said the Wise One. "I do not sorrow over
him, for long is the darkness before the spirit is born. He learns
in your caves not to see, not to hear, not to think, for very anguish
flying your delusions."
"Sorrow is a great bond," Lilith said.
"It is a bond to the object of sorrow. He weeps what thou can never
give him, a life never breathed in thee. He shall come forth, and
thou shalt not see him at the time of passing. When desire dies,
will awakens, the swift, the invisible. He shall go forth, and
one by one the dwellers in your caves will awaken and pass onwards;
this small old path will be trodden by generation after generation.
You, too, oh, shining Lilith, will follow, not as mistress, but
as hand-maiden."
"I shall weave spells," Lilith cried. "They shall never pass me.
With the sweetest poison I will drug them. They will rest drowsily
and content as of old. Were they not giants long ago, mighty men
and heroes? I overcame them with young enchantment. Will they
pass by feeble and longing for bygone joys, for the sins of their
proud exultant youth, while I have grown into a myriad wisdom?"
The Wise One walked to and fro as before, and there was silence,
and I thought I saw that with steady will he pierced the tumultuous
gloom of the cave, and a heart was touched here and there in its
blindness. And I thought I saw that Sad Singer become filled with
a new longing to be, and that the delusions of good and evil fell
from him, and that he came at last to the knees of the Wise One
to learn the supreme truth. In the misty midnight I hear these
three voices, the Sad Singer, the Enchantress Lilith, and the Wise
One. From the Sad Singer I learned that thought of itself leads
nowhere, but blows the perfume from every flower, and cuts the
flower from every tree, and hews down every tree from the valley,
and in the end goes to and fro in waste places gnawing itself in
a last hunger. I learned from Lilith that we weave our own
enchantment, and bind ourselves with out own imagination; to think
of the true as beyond us, or to love the symbol of being, is to
darken the path to wisdom, and to debar us from eternal beauty.
From the Wise One I learned that the truest wisdom is to wait, to
work, and to will in secret; those who are voiceless today, tomorrow
shall be eloquent, and the earth shall hear them, and her children
salute them. Of these three truths the hardest to learn is the
silent will. Let us seek for the highest truth.
--February 15, 1894
A Strange Awakening
Chapter I.
That we are living in the Dark Age we all know, yet we do not realise
half its darkness. We endure physical and moral suffering; but,
fortunately or unfortunately, we are oblivious of the sorrow of
all sorrows--the Spiritual Tragedy. Such a rust has come over the
pure and ancient spirit of life, that the sceptre and the diadem
and the starry sway we held are unremembered; and if anyone speaks
of these things he is looked at strangely with blank eyes, or with
eyes that suspect madness. I do not know whether to call him great,
or pity him, who feels such anguish; for although it is the true
agony of the crucifixion, it is only gods who are so martyred.
With these rare souls memory is not born: life flows on, and they
with it go on in dreams: they are lulled by lights, flowers, stars,
colours, and sweet odours, and are sheltered awhile from heaven
and hell; then in some moment the bubble bursts, and the god
awakens and knows himself, and he rises again with giant strength
to conquer; or else he succumbs, and the waves of Lethe, perhaps
in mercy, blot out his brief knowledge.
I knew such an one many years ago, and I tell of him because I know
of no deeper proof of the existence of a diviner nature than that
man's story. Arthur Harvey, as I have heard people describe him,
in his early years was gentle, shy, and given to much dreaming.
He was taken from school early, came up from the country to the city,
and was put to business. He possessed the apathy and unresisting
nature characteristic of so many spiritual people, and which is
found notably among the natives of India; so he took his daily
confinement at first as a matter of course, though glad enough when
it was over, and the keen sweet air blew about him in spring or
summer evenings, and the earth looked visionary, steeped in dew
and lovely colour, and his soul grew rich with strange memories
and psychic sensations. And so day-by-day he might have gone on
with the alternation of work and dream, and the soul in its
imaginings might never have known of the labours of the mind, each
working by habit in its accustomed hour, but for an incident which
took place about two years after his going to business.
One morning his manager said: "Harvey, take this letter; deliver
it, and wait for an answer." He started up eagerly, glad for the
unwonted freedom from his desk. At the door, as he went out, the
whole blinding glory of the sunlight was dashed on him. He looked
up. Ah! what spaces illimitable of lustrous blue. How far off!
How mighty! He felt suddenly faint, small, mean, and feeble.
His limbs trembled under him: he shrank from the notice of men
as he went on his way. Vastness, such as this, breaking in upon
the eye that had followed the point of the pen, unnerved him: he
felt a bitter self-contempt. What place had he amid these huge
energies? The city deafened him as with one shout: the tread of
the multitude; the mob of vehicles; glitter and shadow; rattle,
roar, and dust; the black smoke curled in the air; higher up the
snowy and brilliant clouds, which the tall winds bore along; all
were but the intricate and wondrous workings of a single monstrous
personality; a rival in the universe who had absorbed and wrested
from him his own divine dower. Out of him; out of him, the power--
the free, the fearless--whirled in play, and drove the suns and
stars in their orbits, and sped the earth through light and shadow.
Out of him; out of him; never to be reconquered; never to be
regained. The exultant laugh of the day; the flame of summer;
the gigantic winds careering over the city; the far-off divine
things filled him with unutterable despair. What was he amid it all?
A spark decaying in its socket; a little hot dust clinging together.
He found himself in a small square; he sat down on a bench; his
brain burning, his eyes unseeing.
"Oh! my, what's he piping over?" jeered a grotesque voice, and a
small figure disappeared, turning somersaults among the bushes.
"Poor young man! Perhaps he is ill. Are you not well, sir?" asked
a sympathetic nurse.
He started up, brought to himself, and muttering something
unintelligible, continued his journey through the city. The
terrible influence departed, and a new change came over him. The
laugh of the urchin rankled in his mind: he hated notice: there
must be something absurd or out of the common in his appearance
to invoke it. He knew suddenly that there was a gulf between him
and the people he lived among. They were vivid, actual, suited
to their places. How he envied them! Then the whole superficies
of his mind became filled with a desire to conceal this difference.
He recalled the various characteristics of those who worked along
with him. One knew all topical songs, slang and phrases; another
affected a smartness in dress; a third discussed theatres with
semi-professional knowledge. Harvey, however, could never have
entered the world, or lived in it, if he had first to pass through
the portals of such ideas! He delivered his letter; he was wearied
out, and as he returned he noticed neither sky nor sunlight, and
the hurrying multitudes were indifferent and without character.
He passed through them; his mind dull like theirs; a mere machine
to guide rapid footsteps.
That evening, a clerk named Whittaker, a little his senior in the
office, was struck by Harvey's curious and delicate face.
"I say, Harvey," he said, "how do you spend your evenings?"
Harvey flushed a little at the unwonted interest.
"I take long walks," he said.
"Do you read much?"
"A little."
"Do you go to the theatre?"
"No."
"Never?"
"Never."
"Whew! what a queer fellow! No clubs, classes, music-halls--
anything of the sort, eh?"
"No," said Harvey, a little bitterly, "I know nothing, nobody; I
am always alone."
"What an extraordinary life! Why, you are out of the universe
completely. I say," he added, "come along with me this evening.
I will initiate you a little. You know you must learn your profession
as a human being."
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