Books: AE in the Irish Theosophist
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George William Russell >> AE in the Irish Theosophist
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The ways by which he was brought to that moment were unremembered;
the sensations and thoughts and moods which culminated in the fire
of self-consciousness could be retraced but vaguely. He had gone
out of the city one Sunday, and lying down in the fields under the
trees, for a time he grew forgetful of misery. He went once more
into the world of dreams. He, or the creature of his imagination,
some shadow of himself, lived in and roamed through antique forests
where the wonderful days were unbroken by sense of sorrow. Childhood
shared in an all-pervading exultation; through the pulses of youth
ran the fiery energy that quickened the world; and this shadow
of the dreamer dwelling amid the forests grew gradually into a
consciousness of a fiery life upon which the surface forms were
but films: he entered this kingdom of fire; its life became his
life; he knew the secret ways to the sun, and the sunny secrets
living in the golden world. "It was I, myself," rushed into Harvey's
mind: "It was I. Ah, how long ago!" Then for the first time,
his visions, dreams and imaginations became real to him, as memories
of a spirit traveling through time and space. Looking backwards,
he could nowhere find in the small and commonplace surroundings of
his life anything which could have suggested or given birth to
these vivid pictures and ideas. They began to move about swiftly
in his mind and arrange themselves in order. He seemed to himself
to have fallen downwards through a long series of lines of ever-
lessening beauty--fallen downwards from the mansions of eternity
into this truckling and hideous life. As Harvey walked homewards
through the streets, some power must have guided his steps, for
he saw or knew nothing of what was about him. With the sense of
the reality of his imaginations came an energy he had never before
felt: his soul took complete possession of him: he knew, though
degraded, that he was a spirit. Then, in that supreme moment,
gathered about him the memories of light and darkness, and they
became the lips through which eternal powers spake to him in a
tongue unlike the speech of men. The spirit of light was behind
the visions of mystical beauty: the spirit of darkness arrayed
itself in the desires of clay. These powers began to war within
him: he heard voices as of Titans talking.
The spirit of light spake within him and said--"Arouse now, and be
thou my voice in this dead land. There are many things to be spoken
and sung--of dead language the music and significance, old world
philosophies; you will be the singer of the sweetest songs;
stories wilder and stranger than any yet will I tell you--deeds
forgotten of the vaporous and dreamy prime.
The voice came yet again closer, full of sweet promise, with magical
utterance floating around him. He became old--inconceivably old
and young together. He was astonished in the wonders of the primal
world. Chaos with tremendous agencies, serpentine powers, strange
men-beasts and men-birds, the crude first thought of awakening
nature was before him; from inconceivable heights of starlike
purity he surveyed it; he went forth from glory; he descended
and did battle; he warred with behemeths, with the flying serpents
and the monstrous creeping things. With the Lords of Air he descended
and conquered; he dwelt in a new land, a world of light, where all
things were of light, where the trees put forth leaves of living
green, where the rose would blossom into a rose of light and lily
into a white radiance, and over the vast of gleaming plains and
through the depths of luminous forests, the dreaming rivers would
roll in liquid and silver flame. Often he joined in the mad dance
upon the highlands, whirling round and round until the dark grass
awoke fiery with rings of green under the feet. And so, on and
on through endless transformations he passed, and he saw how the
first world of dark elements crept in upon the world of beauty,
clothing it around with grossness and veiling its fires; and the
dark spirits entered by subtle ways into the spheres of the spirits
of light, and became as a mist over memory and a chain upon speed;
the earth groaned with the anguish. Then this voice cried within
him--"Come forth; come out of it; come out, oh king, to the
ancestral spheres, to the untroubled spiritual life. Out of the
furnace, for it leaves you dust. Come away, oh king, to old dominion
and celestial sway; come out to the antique glory!"
Then another voice from below laughed at the madness. Full of scorn
it spake, "You, born of clay, a ruler of stars? Pitiful toiler with
the pen, feeble and weary body, what shall make of you a spirit?"
Harvey thrust away this hateful voice. From his soul came the
impulse to go to other lands, to wander for ever and ever under
the star-rich skies, to be a watcher of the dawn and eve, to live
in forest places or on sun-nurtured plains, to merge himself once
more in the fiery soul hidden within. But the mocking voice would
not be stifled, showing him how absurd and ridiculous it was "to
become a vagabond," so the voice said, and finally to die in the
workhouse. So the eternal spirit in him, God's essence, conscious
of its past brotherhood, with the morning stars, the White Aeons,
in its prisonhouse writhed with the meanness, till at last he cried,
"I will struggle no longer; it is only agony of spirit to aspire
here at all; I will sit and wait till the deep darkness has vanished."
But the instruction was not yet complete; he had learned the primal
place of spirit; he had yet to learn its nature. He began to think
with strange sadness over the hopes of the world, the young children.
He saw them in his vision grow up, bear the burden in silence or
ignorance; he saw how they joined in dragging onward that huge
sphinx which men call civilization; there was no time for loitering
amid the beautiful, for if one paused it was but to be trampled by
the feet of the many who could not stay or rest, and the wheels
of the image ground that soul into nothingness. He felt every pain
almost in an anguish of sympathy. Helpless to aid, to his lips
came the cry to another which immemorial usage has made intuitive
in men. But It is high and calm above all appeal; to It the cries
from all the sorrowing stars sound but as one great music; lying
in the infinite fields of heaven, from the united feelings of many
universes It draws only a vast and passionless knowledge, without
distinction of pleasure or pain. From the universal which moves
not and aids not, Harvey in his agony turned away. He himself
could fly from the struggle; thinking of what far place or state
to find peace, he found it true in his own being that nowhere could
the soul find rest while there was still pain or misery in the world.
He could imagine no place or state where these cries of pain would
not reach him: he could imagine no heaven where the sad memory
would not haunt him and burn him. He knew then that the nature
of the soul was love eternal; he knew that if he fled away a
divine compassion would compel him to renew his brotherhood with
the stricken and suffering; and what was best forever to do was
to fight out the fight in the darkness. There was a long silence
in Harvey's soul; then with almost a solemn joy he grew to realize
at last the truth of he himself--the soul. The fight was over;
the Gloom and the Glory were linked together, and one inseparably.
Harvey was full of a sense of quietness, as if a dew fell from
unseen places on him with soothing and healing power. He looked
around. He was at the door of his lodgings. The tall narrow
houses with their dull red hues rose up about him; from their
chimneys went up still higher the dark smoke; but behind its
nebulous wavering the stars were yet; they broke through the smoke
with white lustre. Harvey looked at them for a moment, and went
in strangely comforted.
The End
--March 15-June 15, 1894
The Midnight Blossom
--"Arhans are born at midnight hour..... together with the holy
flower that opes and blooms in darkness."--The Voice of the Silence
We stood together at the door of our hut: we could see through the
gathering gloom where our sheep and goats were cropping the sweet
grass on the side of the hill: we were full of drowsy content as
they were. We had naught to mar our own happiness--neither memory
nor unrest for the future. We lingered on while the vast twilight
encircled us; we were one with its dewy stillness. The lustre
of the early stars first broke in upon our dreaming: we looked up
and around: the yellow constellations began to sing their choral
hymn together. As the night deepened they came out swiftly from
their hiding places in depths of still and unfathomable blue;
they hung in burning clusters; they advanced in multitudes that
dazzled: the shadowy shining of night was strewn all over with
nebulous dust of silver, with long mists of gold with jewels of
glittering green. We felt how fit a place the earth was to live on,
with these nightly glories over us, with silence and coolness upon
its lawns and lakes after the consuming day. Valmika, Kedar, I
and Ananda watched together; through the rich gloom we could see
far distant forests and lights--the lights of village and city in
King Suddhodana's realm.
"Brothers," said Valmika, "How good it is to be here, and not yonder
in the city where they know not peace, even in sleep."
"Yonder and yonder," said Kedar, "I saw the inner air full of a
red glow where they were busy in toiling and strife. It seemed to
reach up to me; I could not breathe. I climbed the hills at dawn
to laugh where the snows were, and the sun is as white as they
are white."
"But, brothers, if we went down among them and told them how happy
we were, and how the flowers grow on the hillside, and all about
the flocks, they would surely come up and leave all sorrow. They
cannot know or they would come." Ananda was a mere child though
so tall for his years.
"They would not come," said Kedar. "All their joy is to haggle
and hoard. When Siva blows upon them with his angry breath they
will lament, or when the Prets in fierce hunger devour them."
"It is good to be here," repeated Valmika drowsily, "to mind the
flocks and be at rest, and to hear the wise Varunna speak when he
comes among us."
I was silent. I knew better than they that busy city which glowed
beyond the dark forests. I had lived there until, grown sick and
weary, I had gone back to my brothers on the hillside. I wondered
would life, indeed, go on ceaselessly until it ended in the pain
of the world. I said within myself--Oh, mighty Brahma, on the
outermost verges of they dream are our lives; thou old invisible,
how faintly through our hearts comes the sound of thy song, the
light of thy glory! Full of yearning to rise and return, I strove
to hear in the heart the music Anahata had spoken of in our sacred
scrolls. There was silence, and then I thought I heard sounds,
not glad, a myriad murmur. As I listen it deepened, it grew into
passionate prayer and appeal and tears, as if the cry of the long-
forgotten souls of men went echoing through empty chambers. My
eyes filled with tears, for it seemed world-wide, and to sigh from
out many ages, long agone, to be and yet to be.
"Ananda! Ananda! where is the boy running to?" cried Valmika.
Ananda had vanished into the gloom. We heard his glad laugh below
and then another voice speaking. Presently up loomed the tall
figure of Varunna. Ananda held his hand and danced beside him.
We could see by the starlight his simple robe of white. I could
trace clearly every feature of the grave and beautiful face, the
radiant eyes; not by the starlight I saw, but because a silvery
shining rayed a little way into the blackness around the dark hair
and face. Valmika, as elder, first spake.
"Holy sir, be welcome. Will you come in and rest?"
"I cannot stay now. I must pass over the mountain ere dawn; but
you may come a little way with me--such of you as will."
We assented gladly--Kedar and I; Valmika remained. Then Ananda
prayed to go. We bade him stay, fearing for him the labour of
climbing and the chill of the snows, but Varunna said: "Let the
child come; he is hardy; he will not tire if he holds my hands."
So we set out together and faced the highlands that rose and rose
above us; we knew well the way even at night. We waited in silence
for Varunna to speak, but for nigh two hours we mounted without
words, save for Ananda's shouts of delight and wonder at the heavens
spread above us. But I was hungry for an answer to my thoughts,
so I spake.
"Master, Valmika was saying, ere you came, how good it was to be
here rather than in the city where they are full of strife, and
Kedar thought their lives would flow on into fiery pain and no
speech would avail. Ananda, speaking as a child indeed, said if
one went down among them they would listen to his story of the
happy life. But, Master, do not many speak and interpret the
sacred writings, and how few they are who lay to heart the words
of the gods! They seem, indeed, to go on through desire into pain,
and even here upon our hills we are not free, for Kedar felt the
hot glow of their passion and I heard in my heart their sobs of
despair. Master, it was terrible, for they seemed to come from
the wide earth over, and out of ages far away."
"There is more of the true in the child's hope than in your despair,
for it is of much avail to speak though but a few listen. Better
is the life which aids, though in sorrow, than the life which
withdraws from pain unto solitude. Yet it is not well to speak
without power, for only the knower of Brahma can interpret the
sacred writings truly. It is well to be free ere we speak of freedom;
then we have power and many hearken."
"But who would leave joy for sorrow, and who being one with Brahma
may return to give council?"
"Brother," said Varunna, "here is the hope of the world. Though
many seek only for the eternal joy, yet the cry you heard has been
heard by great ones who have turned backwards, called by these
beseeching voices. The small old path stretching far away leads
through many wonderful beings to the place of Brahma; there is
the first fountain, the world of beautiful silence, the light that
has been undimmed since the beginning of time--the joy where life
fades into being; but turning backwards, the small old path winds
away into the world of men, it enters every sorrowful heart, and
the way of him who would tread therethro' is stayed by its pain
and barred by its delusion. This is the way the great ones go;
they turn with the path from the door of Brahma the warriors and
the strong ones: they move along its myriad ways; they overcome
darkness with wisdom and pain with compassion. After many conquered
worlds, after many races of men, purified and uplifted they go to
greater than Brahma. In these, though few, is the hope of the world;
these are the heroes for whom, returning, the earth puts forth her
signal fires, and the Devas sing their hymns of welcome."
We paused where the plateau widened out; there was scarce a ripple
in the chill air; in quietness the snows glistened, a light
reflected from the crores of stars that swung with gay and
glittering motion above us. We could hear the immense heart-beat
of the world in the stillness; we had thoughts that went ranging
through the heavens, not sad, but full of solemn hope.
"Brothers! Master! Look, the wonderful thing! and another, and
yet another!" We heard Ananda calling; we looked and saw the holy
blossom--the midnight flower--oh, may the earth again put forth
such beauty--it grew up from the snows with leaves of delicate crystal,
a nimbus encircled each radiant bloom, a halo pale yet lustrous.
I bowed down before it lost in awe. I heard Varunna say:--"The earth,
indeed puts forth her signal fires, and the Devas sing their hymn;
listen!" We heard a music as of beautiful thought moving along the
high places of the earth, full of infinite love and hope and yearning.
"Brothers, be glad, for One is born who has chosen the greater way.
Now I must pass onwards. Kedar, Narayan, Ananda, farewell! Nay,
no further; it is long way to return, and the child will tire."
He went on and passed from our sight. But we did not return; we
remained long, long in silence, looking at the sacred flower.
Vow, taken long ago, be strong in our hearts to-day. Here where
the pain is fiercer, to rest is more sweet. Here where beauty
dies away, it is more joy to be lulled in dreams. Here the good,
the true, our hope, seem but a madness born of ancient pain.
Out of rest, dream, or despair, let us arise. Let us go the way
the Great Ones go.
--July, 1894
The Story of a Star
The emotion that haunted me in that little cathedral town would be
most difficult to describe. After the hurry, rattle, and fever of
the city, the rare weeks spent here were infinitely peaceful. They
were full of a quaint sense of childhood, with sometimes a deeper
chord touched--the giant and spiritual things childhood has dreams of.
The little room I slept in had opposite its window the great grey
cathedral wall; it was only in the evening that the sunlight crept
round it and appeared in the room strained through the faded green
blind. It must have been this silvery quietness of colour which
in some subtle way affected me with the feeling of a continual Sabbath;
and this was strengthened by the bells chiming hour after hour:
the pathos, penitence, and hope expressed by the flying notes
coloured the intervals with faint and delicate memories. They
haunted my dreams, and I heard with unutterable longing the astral
chimes pealing from some dim and vast cathedral of the cosmic memory,
until the peace they tolled became almost a nightmare, and I longed
for utter oblivion or forgetfulness of their reverberations.
More remarkable were the strange lapses into other worlds and times.
Almost as frequent as the changing of the bells were the changes from
state to state. I realised what is meant by the Indian philosophy
of Maya. Truly my days were full of Mayas, and my work-a-day city
life was no more real to me than one of those bright, brief glimpses
of things long past. I talk of the past, and yet these moments
taught me how false our ideas of time are. In the ever-living
yesterday, to-day, and to-morrow are words of no meaning. I know
I fell into what we call the past and the things I counted as dead
for ever were the things I had yet to endure. Out of the old age
of earth I stepped into its childhood, and received once more the
primal blessing of youth, ecstasy, and beauty. But these things
are too vast and vague to speak of; the words we use to-day cannot
tell their story. Nearer to our time is the legend that follows.
I was, I thought, one of the Magi of old Persia, inheritor of its
unforgotten lore, and using some of its powers. I tried to pierce
through the great veil of nature, and feel the life that quickened
it within. I tried to comprehend the birth and growth of planets,
and to do this I rose spiritually and passed beyond earth's confines
into that seeming void which is the matrix where they germinate.
On one of these journeys I was struck by the phantasm, so it seemed,
of a planet I had not observed before. I could not then observe
closer, and coming again on another occasion it had disappeared.
After the lapse of many months I saw it once more, brilliant with
fiery beauty--its motion was slow, rotating around some invisible
centre. I pondered over it, and seemed to know that the invisible
centre was its primordial spiritual state, from which it emerged
a little while and into which it then withdrew. Short was its day;
its shining faded into a glimmer, and then into darkness in a few
months. I learned its time and cycles; I made preparations and
determined to await its coming.
The Birth of a Planet
At first silence and then an inner music, and then the sounds of
song throughout the vastness of its orbit grew as many in number
as there were stars at gaze. Avenues and vistas of sound! They
reeled to and fro. They poured from a universal stillness quick
with unheard things. They rushed forth and broke into a myriad
voices gay with childhood. From age and the eternal they rushed
forth into youth. They filled the void with reveling and exultation.
In rebellion they then returned and entered the dreadful Fountain.
Again they came forth, and the sounds faded into whispers; they
rejoiced once again, and again died into silence.
And now all around glowed a vast twilight; it filled the cradle
of the planet with colourless fire. I felt a rippling motion which
impelled me away from the centre to the circumference. At that
centre a still flame began to lighten; a new change took place,
and space began to curdle, a milky and nebulous substance rocked
to and fro. At every motion the pulsation of its rhythm carried
it farther and farther away from the centre, it grew darker, and
a great purple shadow covered it so that I could see it no longer.
I was now on the outer verge, where the twilight still continued
to encircle the planet with zones of clear transparent light.
As night after night I rose up to visit it they grew many-coloured
and brighter. I saw the imagination of nature visibly at work.
I wandered through shadowy immaterial forests, a titanic vegetation
built up of light and colour; I saw it growing denser, hung with
festoons and trailers of fire, and spotted with the light of myriad
flowers such as earth never knew. Coincident with the appearance
of these things I felt within myself, as if in harmonious movement,
a sense of joyousness, an increase of self-consciousness; I felt
full of gladness, youth, and the mystery of the new. I felt that
greater powers were about to appear, those who had thrown outwards
this world and erected it as a place in space.
I could not tell half the wonder of this strange race. I could
not myself comprehend more than a little of the mystery of their
being. They recognised my presence there, and communicated with
me in such a way that I can only describe it by saying that they
seemed to enter into my soul breathing a fiery life; yet I knew
that the highest I could reach to was but the outer verge of their
spiritual nature, and to tell you but a little I have many times
to translate it, for in the first unity with their thought I touched
on an almost universal sphere of life, I peered into the ancient
heart that beats throughout time; and this knowledge became change
in me, first, into a vast and nebulous symbology, and so down through
many degrees of human thought into words which hold not at all the
pristine and magical beauty.
I stood before one of this race, and I thought, "What is the meaning
and end of life here?" Within me I felt the answering ecstasy that
illuminated with vistas of dawn and rest, it seemed to say:
"Our spring and our summer are unfolding into light and form, and
our autumn and winter are a fading into the infinite soul."
I thought, "To what end is this life poured forth and withdrawn?"
He came nearer and touched me; once more I felt the thrill of being
that changed itself into vision.
"The end is creation, and creation is joy: the One awakens out of
quiescence as we come forth, and knows itself in us; as we return
we enter it in gladness, knowing ourselves. After long cycles the
world you live in will become like ours; it will be poured forth
and withdrawn; a mystic breath, a mirror to glass your being."
He disappeared while I wondered what cyclic changes would transmute
our ball of mud into the subtle substance of thought.
In that world I dared not stay during its period of withdrawal;
having entered a little into its life, I became subject to its laws:
the Power on its return would have dissolved my being utterly. I
felt with a wild terror its clutch upon me, and I withdrew from the
departing glory, from the greatness that was my destiny--but not yet.
From such dreams I would be aroused, perhaps by a gentle knock at
my door, and my little cousin Margaret's quaint face would peep in
with a "Cousin Robert, are you not coming down to supper?"
Of these visions in the light of after thought I would speak a
little. All this was but symbol, requiring to be thrice sublimed
in interpretation ere its true meaning can be grasped. I do not
know whether worlds are heralded by such glad songs, or whether
any have such a fleeting existence, for the mind that reflects
truth is deluded with strange phantasies of time and place in
which seconds are rolled out into centuries and long cycles are
reflected in an instant of time. There is within us a little space
through which all the threads of the universe are drawn; and,
surrounding that incomprehensible centre the mind of man sometimes
catches glimpses of things which are true only in those glimpses;
when we record them the true has vanished, and a shadowy story--
such as this--alone remains. Yet, perhaps, the time is not altogether
wasted in considering legends like these, for they reveal, though
but in phantasy and symbol, a greatness we are heirs to, a destiny
which is ours, though it be yet far away.
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