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NIGHTMARE TALES
THE ARYAN THEOSOPHICAL PRESS Point Loma, California]
NIGHTMARE TALES
_By_
H. P. BLAVATSKY
The Aryan Theosophical Press Point Loma, California, U. S. A. 1907
CONTENTS
PAGE A BEWITCHED LIFE 1
THE CAVE OF THE ECHOES 65
THE LUMINOUS SHIELD 81
FROM THE POLAR LANDS 95
THE ENSOULED VIOLIN 103
A BEWITCHED LIFE
(As Narrated by a Quill Pen)
INTRODUCTION
It was a dark, chilly night in September, 1884. A heavy gloom haddescended over the streets of A----, a small town on the Rhine, and washanging like a black funeral-pall over the dull factory burgh. Thegreater number of its inhabitants, wearied by their long day's work,had hours before retired to stretch their tired limbs, and lay theiraching heads upon their pillows. All was quiet in the large house; allwas quiet in the deserted streets.
I too was lying in my bed; alas, not one of rest, but of pain andsickness, to which I had been confined for some days. So still waseverything in the house, that, as Longfellow has it, its stillnessseemed almost audible. I could plainly hear the murmur of the blood,as it rushed through my aching body, producing that monotonoussinging so familiar to one who lends a watchful ear to silence. I hadlistened to it until, in my nervous imagination, it had grown intothe sound of a distant cataract, the fall of mighty waters ... when,suddenly changing its character, the ever growing "singing" mergedinto other and far more welcome sounds. It was the low, and at firstscarce audible, whisper of a human voice. It approached, and graduallystrengthening seemed to speak in my very ear. Thus sounds a voicespeaking across a blue quiescent lake, in one of those wondrouslyacoustic gorges of the snow-capped mountains, where the air is so purethat a word pronounced half a mile off seems almost at the elbow.Yes; it was the voice of one whom to know is to reverence; of one, tome, owing to many mystic associations, most dear and holy; a voicefamiliar for long years and ever welcome: doubly so in hours of mentalor physical suffering, for it always brings with it a ray of hope andconsolation.
"Courage," it whispered in gentle, mellow tones. "Think of the dayspassed by you in sweet associations; of the great lessons received ofNature's truths; of the many errors of men concerning these truths;and try to add to them the experience of a night in this city. Let thenarrative of a strange life, that will interest you, help to shortenthe hours of suffering.... Give your attention. Look yonder before you!"
"Yonder" meant the clear, large windows of an empty house on the otherside of the narrow street of the German town. They faced my own inalmost a straight line across the street, and my bed faced the windowsof my sleeping room. Obedient to the suggestion, I directed my gazetowards them, and what I saw made me for the time being forget theagony of the pain that racked my swollen arm and rheumatical body.
Over the windows was creeping a mist; a dense, heavy, serpentine,whitish mist, that looked like the huge shadow of a gigantic boa slowlyuncoiling its body. Gradually it disappeared, to leave a lustrouslight, soft and silvery, as though the window-panes behind reflecteda thousand moonbeams, a tropical star-lit sky--first from outside,then from within the empty rooms. Next I saw the mist elongatingitself and throwing, as it were, a fairy bridge across the streetfrom the bewitched windows to my own balcony, nay to my very own bed.As I continued gazing, the wall and windows and the opposite houseitself, suddenly vanished. The space occupied by the empty rooms hadchanged into the interior of another smaller room, in what I knew tobe a Swiss chalet--into a study, whose old, dark walls were coveredfrom floor to ceiling with book shelves on which were many antiquatedfolios, as well as works of a more recent date. In the center stooda large old-fashioned table, littered over with manuscripts andwriting materials. Before it, quill-pen in hand, sat an old man; agrim-looking, skeleton-like personage, with a face so thin, so pale,yellow and emaciated, that the light of the solitary little student'slamp was reflected in two shining spots on his high cheek-bones, asthough they were carved out of ivory.
As I tried to get a better view of him by slowly raising myself upon mypillows, the whole vision, chalet and study, desk, books and scribe,seemed to flicker and move. Once set in motion they approached nearerand nearer, until, gliding noiselessly along the fleecy bridge ofclouds across the street, they floated through the closed windows intomy room and finally seemed to settle beside my bed.
"I NOTICED A LIGHT FLASHING FROM UNDER HIS PEN, A BRIGHTCOLORED SPARK THAT BECAME INSTANTANEOUSLY A SOUND. IT WAS THE SMALLVOICE OF THE QUILL."]
"Listen to what he thinks and is going to write"--said in soothing tonesthe same familiar, far off, and yet near voice. "Thus you will hear anarrative, the telling of which may help to shorten the long sleeplesshours, and even make you forget for a while your pain.... Try!"--itadded, using the well-known Rosicrucian and Kabalistic formula.
I tried, doing as I was bid. I centered all my attention on thesolitary laborious figure that I saw before me, but which did notsee me. At first, the noise of the quill-pen with which the old manwas writing, suggested to my mind nothing more than a low whisperedmurmur of a nondescript nature. Then, gradually, my ear caught theindistinct words of a faint and distant voice, and I thought the figurebefore me, bending over its manuscript, was reading its tale aloudinstead of writing it. But I soon found out my error. For casting mygaze at the old scribe's face, I saw at a glance that his lips werecompressed and motionless, and the voice too thin and shrill to be hisvoice. Stranger still, at every word traced by the feeble, aged hand,I noticed a light flashing from under his pen, a bright colored sparkthat became instantaneously a sound, or--what is the same thing--itseemed to do so to my inner perceptions. It was indeed the small voiceof the quill that I heard, though scribe and pen were at the time,perchance, hundreds of miles away from Germany. Such things will happenoccasionally, especially at night, beneath whose starry shade, as Byrontells us, we
... learn the language of another world ...
However it may be, the words uttered by the quill remained in my memoryfor days after. Nor had I any great difficulty in retaining them, forwhen I sat down to record the story, I found it, as usual, indeliblyimpressed on the astral tablets before my inner eye.
Thus, I had but to copy it and so give it as I received it. I failed tolearn the name of the unknown nocturnal writer. Nevertheless, thoughthe reader may prefer to regard the whole story as one made up for theoccasion, a dream, perhaps, still its incidents will, I hope, provenone the less interesting.
I
THE STRANGER'S STORY
My birth-place is a small mountain hamlet, a cluster of Swiss cottages,hidden deep in a sunny nook, between two tumble-down glaciers and apeak covered with eternal snows. Thither, thirty-seven years ago, Ireturned--crippled mentally and physically--to die, if death would onlyhave me. The pure invigorating air of my birth-place decided otherwise.I am still alive; perhaps for the purpose of giving evidence to factsI have kept profoundly secret from all--a tale of horror I would ratherhide than reveal. The reason for this unwillingness on my part is dueto my early education, and to subsequent events that gave the lie tomy most cherished prejudices. Some people might be inclined
to regardthese events as providential: I, however, believe in no Providence, andyet am unable to attribute them to mere chance. I connect them as theceaseless evolution of effects, engendered by certain direct causes,with one primary and fundamental cause, from which ensued all thatfollowed. A feeble old man am I now, yet physical weakness has in noway impaired my mental faculties. I remember the smallest details ofthat terrible cause, which engendered such fatal results. It is thesewhich furnish me with an additional proof of the actual existence ofone whom I fain would regard--oh, that I could do so!--as a creatureborn of my fancy, the evanescent production of a feverish, horriddream! Oh that terrible, mild and all-forgiving, that saintly andrespected Being! It was that paragon of all the virtues who embitteredmy whole existence. It is he, who, pushing me violently out of themonotonous but secure groove of daily life, was the first to force uponme the certitude of a life hereafter, thus adding an additional horrorto one already great enough.
With a view to a clearer comprehension of the situation, I mustinterrupt these recollections with a few words about myself. Oh how, ifI could, would I obliterate that hated _Self_!
Born in Switzerland, of French parents, who centered the wholeworld-wisdom in the literary trinity of Voltaire, J. J. Rousseauand D'Holbach, and educated in a German university, I grew up athorough materialist, a confirmed atheist. I could never have evenpictured to myself any beings--least of all a Being--above or evenoutside visible nature, as distinguished from her. Hence I regardedeverything that could not be brought under the strictest analysis ofthe physical senses as a mere chimera. A soul, I argued, even supposingman has one, must be material. According to Origen's definition,_incorporeus_[1]--the epithet he gave to his God--signifies a substanceonly more subtle than that of physical bodies, of which, at best,we can form no definite idea. How then can that, of which our sensescannot enable us to obtain any clear knowledge, how can that makeitself visible or produce any tangible manifestations?
[1] +asomatos+.
Accordingly, I received the tales of nascent Spiritualism with afeeling of utter contempt, and regarded the overtures made by certainpriests with derision, often akin to anger. And indeed the latterfeeling has never entirely abandoned me.
Pascal, in the eighth Act of his "Thoughts," confesses to a mostcomplete incertitude upon the existence of God. Throughout my life, Itoo professed a complete certitude as to the non-existence of any suchextra-cosmic being, and repeated with that great thinker the memorablewords in which he tells us: "I have examined if this God of whom allthe world speaks might not have left some marks of himself. I lookeverywhere, and everywhere I see nothing but obscurity. Nature offersme nothing that may not be a matter of doubt and inquietude." Norhave I found to this day anything that might unsettle me in preciselysimilar and even stronger feelings. I have never believed, nor shallI ever believe, in a Supreme Being. But at the potentialities of man,proclaimed far and wide in the East, powers so developed in somepersons as to make them virtually Gods, at them I laugh no more. Mywhole broken life is a protest against such negation. I believe in suchphenomena, and--I curse them, whenever they come, and by whatsoevermeans generated.
On the death of my parents, owing to an unfortunate lawsuit, I lost thegreater part of my fortune, and resolved--for the sake of those I lovedbest, rather than for my own--to make another for myself. My eldersister, whom I adored, had married a poor man. I accepted the offer ofa rich Hamburg firm and sailed for Japan as its junior partner.
For several years my business went on successfully. I got into theconfidence of many influential Japanese, through whose protection Iwas enabled to travel and transact business in many localities, which,in those days especially, were not easily accessible to foreigners.Indifferent to every religion, I became interested in the philosophyof Buddhism, the only religious system I thought worthy of beingcalled philosophical. Thus, in my moments of leisure, I visited themost remarkable temples of Japan, the most important and curious ofthe ninety-six Buddhist monasteries of Kioto. I have examined inturn Day-Bootzoo, with its gigantic bell; Tzeonene, Enarino-Yassero,Kie-Missoo, Higadzi-Hong-Vonsi, and many other famous temples.
Several years passed away, and during that whole period I was notcured of my scepticism, nor did I ever contemplate having my opinionson this subject altered. I derided the pretentions of the Japanesebonzes and ascetics, as I had those of Christian priests and EuropeanSpiritualists. I could not believe in the acquisition of powers unknownto, and never studied by, men of science; hence I scoffed at all suchideas. The superstitious and atrabilious Buddhist, teaching us to shunthe pleasures of life, to put to rout one's passions, to render oneselfinsensible alike to happiness and suffering, in order to acquire suchchimerical powers--seemed supremely ridiculous in my eyes.
On a day for ever memorable to me--a fatal day--I made the acquaintanceof a venerable and learned Bonze, a Japanese priest, named TamooraHideyeri. I met him at the foot of the golden Kwon-On, and from thatmoment he became my best and most trusted friend. Notwithstanding mygreat and genuine regard for him, however, whenever a good opportunitywas offered I never failed to mock his religious convictions, therebyvery often hurting his feelings.
But my old friend was as meek and forgiving as any true Buddhist'sheart might desire. He never resented my impatient sarcasms, even whenthey were, to say the least, of equivocal propriety, and generallylimited his replies to the "wait and see" kind of protest. Nor could hebe brought to seriously believe in the sincerity of my denial of theexistence of any God or Gods. The full meaning of the terms "atheism"and "scepticism" was beyond the comprehension of his otherwiseextremely intellectual and acute mind. Like certain reverentialChristians, he seemed incapable of realizing that any man of senseshould prefer the wise conclusions arrived at by philosophy and modernscience to a ridiculous belief in an invisible world full of Gods andspirits, dzins and demons. "Man is a spiritual being," he insisted,"who returns to earth more than once, and is rewarded or punished inthe between times." The proposition that man is nothing else but a heapof organized dust, was beyond him. Like Jeremy Collier, he refused toadmit that he was no better than "a stalking machine, a speaking headwithout a soul in it," whose "thoughts are all bound by the laws ofmotion." "For," he argued, "if my actions were, as you say, prescribedbeforehand, and I had no more liberty or free will to change the courseof my action than the running waters of the river yonder, then theglorious doctrine of Karma, of merit and demerit, would be foolishnessindeed."
Thus the whole of my hyper-metaphysical friend's ontology rested onthe shaky superstructure of metempsychosis, of a fancied "just" Law ofRetribution, and other such equally absurd dreams.
"We cannot," said he paradoxically one day, "hope to live hereafter inthe full enjoyment of our consciousness, unless we have built for itbeforehand a firm and solid foundation of spirituality.... Nay, laughnot, friend of no faith," he meekly pleaded, "but rather think andreflect on this. One who has never taught himself to live in Spiritduring his conscious and responsible life on earth, can hardly hope toenjoy a sentient existence after death, when, deprived of his body, heis limited to that Spirit alone."
"What can you mean by life in Spirit?"--I inquired.
"Life on a spiritual plane; that which the Buddhists call _TushitaDevaloka_ (Paradise). Man can create such a blissful existence forhimself between two births, by the gradual transference on to thatplane of all the faculties which during his sojourn on earth manifestthrough his organic body and, as you call it, animal brain."...
"How absurd! And how can man do this?"
"Contemplation and a strong desire to assimilate the blessed Gods, willenable him to do so."
"And if man refuses this intellectual occupation, by which you mean, Isuppose, the fixing of the eyes on the tip of his nose, what becomes ofhim after the death of his body?" was my mocking question.
"He will be dealt with according to the prevailing state of hisconsciousness, of which there are many grades. At best--immediaterebirth; at worst--the state
of _avitchi_, a mental hell. Yet one neednot be an ascetic to assimilate spiritual life which will extend tothe hereafter. All that is required is to try to approach Spirit."
"How so? Even when disbelieving in it?"--I rejoined.
"Even so! One may disbelieve and yet harbor in one's nature room fordoubt, however small that room may be, and thus try one day, were itbut for one moment, to open the door of the inner temple; and this willprove sufficient for the purpose."
"You are decidedly poetical, and paradoxical to boot, reverend sir.Will you kindly explain to me a little more of the mystery?"
"There is none; still I am willing. Suppose for a moment that someunknown temple to which you have never been before, and the existenceof which you think you have reasons to deny, is the 'spiritual plane'of which I am speaking. Some one takes you by the hand and leads youtowards its entrance, curiosity makes you open its door and lookwithin. By this simple act, by entering it for one second, you haveestablished an everlasting connexion between your consciousness and thetemple. You cannot deny its existence any longer, nor obliterate thefact of your having entered it. And according to the character and thevariety of your work, within its holy precincts, so will you live in itafter your consciousness is severed from its dwelling of flesh."
"What do you mean? And what has my after-death consciousness--if such athing exists--to do with the temple?"
"It has everything to do with it," solemnly rejoined the old man."There can be no self-consciousness after death outside the templeof spirit. That which you will have done within its plane will alonesurvive. All the rest is false and an illusion. It is doomed to perishin the Ocean of Maya."
Amused at the idea of living outside one's body, I urged on my oldfriend to tell me more. Mistaking my meaning, the venerable manwillingly consented.
Tamoora Hideyeri belonged to the great temple of Tzi-Onene, a Buddhistmonastery, famous not only in all Japan, but also throughout Tibetand China. No other is so venerated in Kioto. Its monks belong to thesect of Dzeno-doo, and are considered as the most learned among themany erudite fraternities. They are, moreover, closely connected andallied with the Yamabooshi (the ascetics, or hermits), who follow thedoctrines of Lao-tze. No wonder, that at the slightest provocation onmy part the priest flew into the highest metaphysics, hoping thereby tocure me of my infidelity.
No use repeating here the long rigmarole of the most hopelesslyinvolved and incomprehensible of all doctrines. According to hisideas, we have to train ourselves for spirituality in another world--asfor gymnastics. Carrying on the analogy between the temple and the"spiritual plane" he tried to illustrate his idea. He had himselfworked in the temple of Spirit two-thirds of his life, and givenseveral hours daily to "contemplation." Thus _he knew_ (?!) that afterhe had laid aside his mortal casket, "a mere illusion," he explained--hewould in his spiritual consciousness live over again every feelingof ennobling joy and divine bliss he had ever had, or _ought to havehad_--only a hundred-fold intensified. His work on the spirit-plane hadbeen considerable, he said, and he hoped, therefore, that the wages ofthe laborer would prove proportionate.
"But suppose the laborer, as in the example you have just broughtforward in my case, should have no more than opened the temple door outof mere curiosity; had only peeped into the sanctuary never to set hisfoot therein again. What then?"
"Then," he answered, "you would have only this short minute to recordin your future self-consciousness and no more. Our life hereafterrecords and repeats but the impressions and feelings we have had in ourspiritual experiences and nothing else. Thus, if instead of reverenceat the moment of entering the abode of Spirit, you had been harboringin your heart anger, jealousy or grief, then your future spiritual lifewould be a sad one, in truth. There would be nothing to record, savethe opening of a door in a fit of bad temper."
"How then could it be repeated?"--I insisted, highly amused. "What doyou suppose I would be doing before incarnating again?"
"In that case," he said, speaking slowly and weighing every word--"inthat case, _you would have, I fear, only to open and shut the templedoor, over and over again, during a period which, however short, wouldseem to you an eternity_."
This kind of after-death occupation appeared to me, at that time, sogrotesque in its sublime absurdity, that I was seized with an almostinextinguishable fit of laughter.
My venerable friend looked considerably dismayed at such a resultof his metaphysical instruction. He had evidently not expected suchhilarity. However, he said nothing, but only sighed and gazed at mewith increased benevolence and pity shining in his small black eyes.
"Pray excuse my laughter," I apologized. "But really, now, you cannotseriously mean to tell me that the 'spiritual state' you advocate andso firmly believe in, consists only in aping certain things we do inlife?"
"Nay, nay; not aping, but only intensifying their repetition; fillingthe gaps that were unjustly left unfilled during life in the fruitionof our acts and deeds, and of everything performed on the spiritualplane of the one real state. What I said was an illustration, andno doubt for you, who seem entirely ignorant of the mysteries of_Soul-Vision_, not a very intelligible one. It is myself who am to beblamed.... What I sought to impress upon you was that, as the spiritualstate of our consciousness liberated from its body is but the fruitionof every spiritual act performed during life, where an act had beenbarren, there could be no results expected--save the repetition of thatact itself. This is all. I pray you may be spared such fruitless deedsand finally made to see certain truths." And passing through the usualJapanese courtesies of taking leave, the excellent man departed.
Alas, alas! had I but known at the time what I have learned since, howlittle would I have laughed, and how much more would I have learned!
But as the matter stood, the more personal affection and respect I feltfor him, the less could I become reconciled to his wild ideas aboutan after-life, and especially as to the acquisition by some men ofsupernatural powers. I felt particularly disgusted with his reverencefor the Yamabooshi, the allies of every Buddhist sect in the land.Their claims to the "miraculous" were simply odious to my notions. Tohear every Jap I knew at Kioto, even to my own partner, the shrewdestof all the business men I had come across in the East--mentioning thesefollowers of Lao-tze with downcast eyes, reverentially folded hands,and affirmations of their possessing "great" and "wonderful" gifts,was more than I was prepared to patiently tolerate in those days. Andwho were they, after all, these great magicians with their ridiculouspretensions to super-mundane knowledge; these "holy beggars" who, as Ithen thought, purposely dwell in the recesses of unfrequented mountainsand on unapproachable craggy steeps, so as the better to afford nochance to curious intruders of finding them out and watching them intheir own dens? Simply impudent fortune-tellers, Japanese gypsieswho sell charms and talismans, and no better. In answer to those whosought to assure me that though the Yamabooshi lead a mysterious life,admitting none of the profane to their secrets, they still do acceptpupils, however difficult it is for one to become their disciple, andthat thus they have living witnesses to the great purity and sanctityof their lives, in answer to such affirmations I opposed the strongestnegation and stood firmly by it. I insulted both masters and pupils,classing them under the same category of fools, when not knaves, andI went so far as to include in this number the Sintos. Now Sintoismor _Sin-Syu_, "faith in the Gods, and in the way to the Gods," thatis, belief in the communication between these creatures and men, isa kind of worship of nature-spirits, than which nothing can be moremiserably absurd. And by placing the Sintos among the fools and knavesof other sects, I gained many enemies. For the Sinto Kanusi (spiritualteachers) are looked upon as the highest in the upper classes ofSociety, the Mikado himself being at the head of their hierarchy andthe members of the sect belonging to the most cultured and educated menin Japan. These Kanusi of the Sinto form no caste or class apart, nordo they pass any ordination--at any rate none known to outsiders. And asthey claim publicly no special privilege or powers,
even their dressbeing in no wise different from that of the laity, but are simply inthe world's opinion professors and students of occult and spiritualsciences, I very often came in contact with them without in the leastsuspecting that I was in the presence of such personages.
II
THE MYSTERIOUS VISITOR
Years passed; and as time went by, my ineradicable scepticism grewstronger and waxed fiercer every day. I have already mentioned an elderand much-beloved sister, my only surviving relative. She had marriedand had lately gone to live at Nuremberg. I regarded her with feelingsmore filial than fraternal, and her children were as dear to me asmight have been my own. At the time of the great catastrophe that inthe course of a few days had made my father lose his large fortune, andmy mother break her heart, she it was, that sweet big sister of mine,who had made herself of her own accord the guardian angel of our ruinedfamily. Out of her great love for me, her younger brother, for whom sheattempted to replace the professors that could no longer be afforded,she had renounced her own happiness. She sacrificed herself and the manshe loved, by indefinitely postponing their marriage, in order to helpour father and chiefly myself by her undivided devotion. And, oh, how Iloved and reverenced her, time but strengthening this earliest familyaffection! They who maintain that no atheist, as such, can be a truefriend, an affectionate relative, or a loyal subject, utter--whetherconsciously or unconsciously--the greatest calumny and lie. To say thata materialist grows hard-hearted as he grows older, that he cannot loveas a believer does, is simply the greatest fallacy.
There may be such exceptional cases it is true, but these are foundonly occasionally in men who are even more selfish than they aresceptical, or vulgarly worldly. But when a man who is kindly disposedin his nature, for no selfish motives but because of reason and loveof truth, becomes what is called atheistical, he is only strengthenedin his family affections, and in his sympathies with his fellow men.All his emotions, all the ardent aspirations towards the unseen andunreachable, all the love which he would otherwise have uselesslybestowed on a suppositional heaven and its God, become now centeredwith tenfold force upon his loved ones and mankind. Indeed, theatheist's heart alone--
... can know, What secret tides of still enjoyment flow When brothers love....
It was such holy fraternal love that led me also to sacrifice mycomfort and personal welfare to secure her happiness, the felicityof her who had been more than a mother to me. I was a mere youthwhen I left home for Hamburg. There, working with all the desperateearnestness of a man who has but one noble object in view--to relievesuffering, and help those whom he loves--I very soon secured theconfidence of my employers, who raised me in consequence to the highpost of trust I always enjoyed. My first real pleasure and reward inlife was to see my sister married to the man she had sacrificed for mysake, and to help them in their struggle for existence. So purifyingand unselfish was this affection of mine for her that when it cameto be shared among her children, instead of losing in intensity bysuch division, it seemed only to grow the stronger. Born with thepotentiality of the warmest family affection in me, the devotion for mysister was so great, that the thought of burning that sacred fire oflove before any idol, save that of herself and family, never entered myhead. This was the only church I recognized, the only church wherein Iworshipped at the altar of holy family affection. In fact this largefamily of eleven persons, including her husband, was the only tiethat attached me to Europe. Twice during a period of nine years, hadI crossed the ocean with the sole object of seeing and pressing thesedear ones to my heart. I had no other business in the West; and havingperformed this pleasant duty, I returned each time to Japan to work andtoil for them. For their sake I remained a bachelor, that the wealth Imight acquire should go undivided to them alone.
We had always corresponded as regularly as the long transit of the thenvery irregular service of the mail-boats would permit. But suddenlythere came a break in my letters from home. For nearly a year Ireceived no intelligence; and day by day, I became more restless, moreapprehensive of some great misfortune. Vainly I looked for a letter, asimple message; and my efforts to account for so unusual a silence werefruitless.
"Friend," said to me one day Tamoora Hideyeri, my only confidant,"Friend, consult a holy Yamabooshi and you will feel at rest."
Of course the offer was rejected with as much moderation as I couldcommand under the provocation. But, as steamer after steamer came inwithout a word of news, I felt a despair which daily increased in depthand fixity. This finally degenerated into an irrepressible craving, amorbid desire to learn--the worst as I then thought. I struggled hardwith the feeling, but it had the best of me. Only a few months beforea complete master of myself--I now became an abject slave to fear. Afatalist of the school of D'Holbach, I, who had always regarded beliefin the system of necessity as being the only promoter of philosophicalhappiness, and as having the most advantageous influence over humanweaknesses, _I_ felt a craving for something akin to fortune-telling!I had gone so far as to forget the first principle of my doctrine--theonly one calculated to calm our sorrows, to inspire us with a usefulsubmission, namely a rational resignation to the decrees of blinddestiny, with which foolish sensibility causes us so often to beoverwhelmed--the doctrine that _all is necessary_. Yes; forgettingthis, I was drawn into a shameful, superstitious longing, a stupid,disgraceful desire to learn--if not futurity, at any rate that which wastaking place at the other side of the globe. My conduct seemed utterlymodified, my temperament and aspirations wholly changed; and like aweak, nervous girl, I caught myself straining my mind to the very vergeof lunacy in an attempt to look--as I had been told one could sometimesdo--beyond the oceans, and learn, at last, the real cause of this long,inexplicable silence!
One evening, at sunset, my old friend, the venerable Bonze, Tamoora,appeared on the verandah of my low wooden house. I had not visitedhim for many days, and he had come to know how I was. I took theopportunity to once more sneer at one, whom, in reality, I regardedwith most affectionate respect. With equivocal taste--for which Irepented almost before the words had been pronounced--I inquired ofhim why he had taken the trouble to walk all that distance when hemight have learned anything he liked about me by simply interrogatinga Yamabooshi? He seemed a little hurt, at first; but after keenlyscrutinizing my dejected face, he mildly remarked that he could onlyinsist upon what he had advised before. Only one of that holy ordercould give me consolation in my present state.
From that instant, an insane desire possessed me to challenge him toprove his assertions. I defied--I said to him--any and every one of hisalleged magicians to tell me the name of the person I was thinkingof, and what he was doing at that moment. He quietly answered that mydesire could be easily satisfied. There was a Yamabooshi two doors fromme, visiting a sick Sinto. He would fetch him--if I only said the word.
I said it and _from the moment of its utterance my doom was sealed_.
How shall I find words to describe the scene that followed! Twentyminutes after the desire had been so incautiously expressed, an oldJapanese, uncommonly tall and majestic for one of that race, pale,thin and emaciated, was standing before me. There, where I hadexpected to find servile obsequiousness, I only discerned an air ofcalm and dignified composure, the attitude of one who knows his moralsuperiority, and therefore scorns to notice the mistakes of those whofail to recognize it. To the somewhat irreverent and mocking questions,which I put to him one after another, with feverish eagerness, he madeno reply; but gazed on me in silence as a physician would look at adelirious patient. From the moment he fixed his eye on mine, I felt--orshall I say, saw--as though it were a sharp ray of light, a thin silverythread, shoot out from the intensely black and narrow eyes so deeplysunk in the yellow old face. It seemed to penetrate into my brainand heart like an arrow, and set to work to dig out therefrom everythought and feeling. Yes; I both saw and felt it, and very soon thedouble sensation became intolerable.
To break the spell I defied him to tell me w
hat he had found in mythoughts. Calmly came the correct answer--Extreme anxiety for a femalerelative, her husband and children, who were inhabiting a house thecorrect description of which he gave as though he knew it as wellas myself. I turned a suspicious eye upon my friend, the Bonze, towhose indiscretions, I thought, I was indebted for the quick reply.Remembering however that Tamoora could know nothing of the appearanceof my sister's house, that the Japanese are proverbially truthful and,as friends, faithful to death--I felt ashamed of my suspicion. To atonefor it before my own conscience I asked the hermit whether he couldtell me anything of the present state of that beloved sister of mine.The foreigner--was the reply--would never believe in the words, or trustto the knowledge of any person but himself. Were the Yamabooshi to tellhim, the impression would wear out hardly a few hours later, and theinquirer find himself as miserable as before. There was but one means;and that was to make the foreigner (myself) see with his own eyes, andthus learn the truth for himself. Was the inquirer ready to be placedby a Yamabooshi, a stranger to him, in the required state?
I had heard in Europe of mesmerized somnambules and pretenders toclairvoyance, and having no faith in them, I had, therefore, nothingagainst the process itself. Even in the midst of my never-ceasingmental agony, I could not help smiling at the ridiculous nature of theoperation I was willingly submitting to. Nevertheless I silently bowedconsent.
III
PSYCHIC MAGIC
The old Yamabooshi lost no time. He looked at the setting sun, andfinding probably, the Lord Ten-Dzio-Dai-Dzio (the Spirit who dartshis Rays) propitious for the coming ceremony, he speedily drew out alittle bundle. It contained a small lacquered box, a piece of vegetablepaper, made from the bark of the mulberry tree, and a pen, with whichhe traced upon the paper a few sentences in the _Naiden_ character--apeculiar style of written language used only for religious and mysticalpurposes. Having finished, he exhibited from under his clothes a smallround mirror of steel of extraordinary brilliancy, and placing itbefore my eyes, asked me to look into it.
I had not only heard before of these mirrors, which are frequently usedin the temples, but I had often seen them. It is claimed that underthe direction and will of instructed priests, there appear in them theDaij-Dzin, the great spirits who notify the inquiring devotees of theirfate. I first imagined that his intention was to evoke such a spirit,who would answer my queries. What happened, however, was something ofquite a different character.
No sooner had I, not without a last pang of mental squeamishness,produced by a deep sense of my own absurd position, touched themirror, than I suddenly felt a strange sensation in the arm of thehand that held it. For a brief moment I forgot to "sit in the seat ofthe scorner" and failed to look at the matter from a ludicrous pointof view. Was it fear that suddenly clutched my brain, for an instantparalyzing its activity--
... that fear When the heart longs to know, what it is death to hear?
No; for I still had consciousness enough left to go on persuadingmyself that nothing would come out of an experiment, in the natureof which no sane man could ever believe. What was it then, thatcrept across my brain like a living thing of ice, producing thereina sensation of horror, and then clutched at my heart as if a deadlyserpent had fastened its fangs into it? With a convulsive jerk of thehand I dropped the--I blush to write the adjective--"magic" mirror, andcould not force myself to pick it up from the settee on which I wasreclining. For one short moment there was a terrible struggle betweensome undefined, and to me utterly inexplicable, longing to look intothe depths of the polished surface of the mirror and my pride, theferocity of which nothing seemed capable of taming. It was finallyso tamed, however, its revolt being conquered by its own defiantintensity. There was an opened novel lying on a lacquer table near thesettee, and as my eyes happened to fall upon its pages, I read thewords, "The veil which covers futurity is woven by the hand of mercy."This was enough. That same pride which had hitherto held me back fromwhat I regarded as a degrading, superstitious experiment, caused me tochallenge my fate. I picked up the ominously shining disk and preparedto look into it.
While I was examining the mirror, the Yamabooshi hastily spoke a fewwords to the Bonze, Tamoora, at which I threw a furtive and suspiciousglance at both. I was wrong once more.
"The holy man desires me to put you a question and give you at thesame time a warning," remarked the Bonze. "If you are willing to seefor yourself now, you will have--under the penalty of _seeing for ever,in the hereafter, all that is taking place, at whatever distance, andthat against your will or inclination_--to submit to a regular course ofpurification, after you have learned what you want through the mirror."
"What is this course, and what have I to promise?" I asked defiantly.
"It is for your own good. You must promise him to submit to theprocess, lest, for the rest of his life, he should have to holdhimself responsible, before his own conscience, for having made an_irresponsible_ seer of you. Will you do so, friend?"
"There will be time enough to think of it, if I see anything"--Isneeringly replied, adding under my breath--"something I doubt a gooddeal, so far."
"Well, you are warned, friend. The consequences will now remain withyourself," was the solemn answer.
I glanced at the clock, and made a gesture of impatience, which wasremarked and understood by the Yamabooshi. It was just _seven minutesafter five_.
"Define well in your mind _what_ you would see and learn," said the"conjuror," placing the mirror and paper in my hands, and instructingme how to use them.
His instructions were received by me with more impatience thangratitude; and for one short instant, I hesitated again. Nevertheless Ireplied, while fixing the mirror:
"_I desire but one thing--to learn the reason or reasons why my sisterhas so suddenly ceased writing to me._"...
Had I pronounced these words in reality, and in the hearing of the twowitnesses, or had I only thought them? To this day I cannot decide thepoint. I now remember but one thing distinctly: while I sat gazing inthe mirror, the Yamabooshi kept gazing at me. But whether this processlasted half a second or three hours, I have never since been able tosettle in my mind with any degree of satisfaction. I can recall everydetail of the scene up to the moment when I took up the mirror withthe left hand, holding the paper inscribed with the mystic charactersbetween the thumb and finger of the right, when all of a sudden Iseemed to quite lose consciousness of the surrounding objects. Thepassage from the active waking state to one that I could compare withnothing I had ever experienced before, was so rapid, that while my eyeshad ceased to perceive external objects and had completely lost sightof the Bonze, the Yamabooshi, and even of my room, I could neverthelessdistinctly see the whole of my head and my back, as I sat leaningforward with the mirror in my hand. Then came a strong sensation ofan involuntary rush forward, of _snapping_ off, so to say, from myplace--I had almost said from my body. And, then, while every one ofmy other senses had become totally paralysed, my eyes, as I thought,unexpectedly caught a clearer and far more vivid glimpse than they hadever had in reality, of my sister's new house at Nuremberg, which I hadnever visited and knew only from a sketch, and other scenery with whichI had never been very familiar. Together with this, and while feelingin my brain what seemed like flashes of a departing consciousness--dyingpersons must feel so, no doubt--the very last, vague thought, so weakas to have been hardly perceptible, was that I must look very, _very_ridiculous.... This _feeling_--for such it was rather than a thought--wasinterrupted, suddenly extinguished, so to say, by a clear _mentalvision_ (I cannot characterize it otherwise) of myself, of that whichI regarded as, and knew to be my body, lying with ashy cheeks on thesettee, dead to all intents and purposes, but still staring with thecold and glassy eyes of a corpse into the mirror. Bending over it, withhis two emaciated hands cutting the air in every direction over _its_white face, stood the tall figure of the Yamabooshi, for whom I feltat that instant an inextinguishable, murderous hatred. As I was
going,in thought, to pounce upon the vile charlatan, my corpse, the two oldmen, the room itself, and every object in it, trembled and danced in areddish glowing light, and seemed to float rapidly away from "me." Afew more grotesque, distorted shadows before "my" sight; and, with alast feeling of terror and a supreme effort to realise _who then was Inow, since I was not that corpse_--a great veil of darkness fell overme, like a funeral pall, and every thought in me was dead.
IV
A VISION OF HORROR
How strange!... Where was I now? It was evident to me that I had oncemore returned to my senses. For there I was, vividly realizing thatI was rapidly moving forward, while experiencing a queer, strangesensation as though I were swimming, without impulse or effort on mypart, and in total darkness. The idea that first presented itself tome was that of a long subterranean passage of water, of earth, andstifling air, though bodily I had no perception, no sensation, of thepresence or contact of any of these. I tried to utter a few words, torepeat my last sentence, "I desire but one thing: to learn the reasonor reasons why my sister has so suddenly ceased writing to me"--but theonly words I heard out of the twenty-one, were the two, "_to learn_,"and these, instead of their coming out of my own larynx, came back tome in my own voice, but entirely outside myself, near, but not in me.In short, they were pronounced by my voice, not by my lips....
One more rapid, involuntary motion, one more plunge into theCimmerian darkness of a (to me) unknown element, and I saw myselfstanding--actually standing--underground, as it seemed. I was compactlyand thickly surrounded on all sides, above and below, right and left,with earth, and _in_ the mould, and yet it weighed not, and seemedquite immaterial and transparent to _my senses_. I did not realizefor one second the utter absurdity, nay, impossibility of that_seeming_ fact! One second more, one short instant, and I perceived--oh,inexpressible horror, when I think of it now; for then, although Iperceived, realized, and recorded facts and events far more clearlythan ever I had done before, I did not seem to be touched in any otherway by what I saw. Yes--I perceived a coffin at my feet. It was a plainunpretentious shell, made of deal, the last couch of the pauper,in which, notwithstanding its closed lid, I plainly saw a hideous,grinning skull, a man's skeleton, mutilated and broken in many of itsparts, as though it had been taken out of some hidden chamber of thedefunct Inquisition, where it had been subjected to torture. "Who canit be?"--I thought.
At this moment I heard again proceeding from afar the same voice--_my_voice ... "_the reason or reasons why_" ... it said; as though thesewords were the unbroken continuation of the same sentence of whichit had just repeated the two words "to learn." It sounded near, andyet as from some incalculable distance; giving me then the idea thatthe long subterranean journey, the subsequent mental reflexions anddiscoveries, had occupied no time; had been performed during the short,almost instantaneous interval between the first and the middle words ofthe sentence, begun, at any rate, if not actually pronounced by myselfin my room at Kioto, and which it was now finishing, in interrupted,broken phrases, like a faithful echo of my own words and voice....
Forthwith, the hideous, mangled remains began assuming a form, andto me, but too familiar appearance. The broken parts joined togetherone to the other, the bones became covered once more with flesh, andI recognized in these disfigured remains--with some surprise, but nota trace of feeling at the sight--my sister's dead husband, my ownbrother-in-law, whom I had for her sake loved so truly. "How was it,and how did he come to die such a terrible death?"--I asked myself. Toput oneself a query seemed, in the state in which I was, to instantlysolve it. Hardly had I asked myself the question, when, as if in apanorama, I saw the retrospective picture of poor Karl's death, in allits horrid vividness, and with every thrilling detail, every one ofwhich, however, left me then entirely and brutally indifferent. Herehe is, the dear old fellow, full of life and joy at the prospect ofmore lucrative employment from his principal, examining and trying in awood-sawing factory a monster steam engine just arrived from America.He bends over, to examine more closely an inner arrangement, to tightena screw. His clothes are caught by the teeth of the revolving wheelin full motion, and suddenly he is dragged down, doubled up, and hislimbs half severed, torn off, before the workmen, unacquainted with themechanism can stop it. He is taken out, or what remains of him, dead,mangled, a thing of horror, an unrecognizable mass of palpitating fleshand blood! I follow the remains, wheeled as an unrecognizable heap tothe hospital, hear the brutally given order that the messengers ofdeath should stop on their way at the house of the widow and orphans.I follow them, and find the unconscious family quietly assembledtogether. I see my sister, the dear and beloved, and remain indifferentat the sight, only feeling highly interested in the coming scene. Myheart, my feelings, even my personality, seemed to have disappeared, tohave been left behind, to belong to somebody else.
There "I" stand, and witness her unprepared reception of the ghastlynews. I realize clearly, without one moment's hesitation or mistake,the effect of the shock upon her, I perceive clearly, following andrecording, to the minutest detail, her sensations and the inner processthat takes place in her. I watch and remember, missing not one singlepoint.
As the corpse is brought into the house for identification I hearthe long agonizing cry, my own name pronounced, and the dull thud ofthe living body falling upon the remains of the dead one. I followwith curiosity the sudden thrill and the instantaneous perturbationin her brain that follow it, and watch with attention the worm-like,precipitate, and immensely intensified motion of the tubular fibers,the instantaneous change of color in the cephalic extremity of thenervous system, the fibrous nervous matter passing from white to brightred and then to a dark red, bluish hue. I notice the sudden flash ofa phosphorous-like, brilliant Radiance, its tremor and its suddenextinction followed by darkness--complete darkness in the region ofmemory--as the Radiance, comparable in its form only to a human shape,oozes out suddenly from the top of the head, expands, loses its formand scatters. And I say to myself: "This is insanity; life-long,incurable insanity, for the principle of intelligence is not paralyzedor extinguished temporarily, but has just deserted the tabernacle forever, ejected from it by the terrible force of the sudden blow.... Thelink between the animal and the divine essence is broken."... And asthe unfamiliar term "divine" is mentally uttered _my_ "THOUGHT"--laughs.
Suddenly I hear again my far-off yet near voice pronouncingemphatically and close by me the words ... "_why my sister has sosuddenly ceased writing_."... And before the two final words "_tome_" have completed the sentence, I see a long series of sad events,immediately following the catastrophe.
I behold the mother, now a helpless, grovelling idiot, in the lunaticasylum attached to the city hospital, the seven younger childrenadmitted into a refuge for paupers. Finally I see the two elder, a boyof fifteen, and a girl a year younger, my favorites, both taken bystrangers into their service. A captain of a sailing vessel carriesaway my nephew, an old Jewess adopts the tender girl. I see the eventswith all their horrors and thrilling details, and record each, to thesmallest detail, with the utmost coolness.
For, mark well: when I use such expressions as "horrors," etc., theyare to be understood as an after-thought. During the whole time of theevents described I experienced no sensation of either pain or pity. Myfeelings seemed to be paralyzed as well as my external senses; it wasonly after "coming back" that I realized my irretrievable losses totheir full extent.
Much of that which I had so vehemently denied in those days, owing tosad personal experience I have to admit now. Had I been told by anyoneat that time, that man could act and think and feel, irrespective ofhis brain and senses; nay, that by some mysterious, and to this day,for me, incomprehensible power, _he_ could be transported _mentally_,thousands of miles away from his body, there to witness not onlypresent but also past events, and remember these by storing them inhis memory--I would have proclaimed that man a madman. Alas, I can doso no longer, for I have become myself that "madman." Ten, twenty,forty, a h
undred times during the course of this wretched life of mine,have I experienced and lived over such moments of existence, _outsideof my body_. Accursed be that hour when this terrible power was firstawakened in me! I have not even the consolation left of attributingsuch glimpses of events at a distance to insanity. Madmen rave and seethat which exists not in the realm they belong to. My visions haveproved _invariably correct_. But to my narrative of woe.
I had hardly had time to see my unfortunate young niece in her newIsraelitish home, when I felt a shock of the same nature as the onethat had sent me "swimming" through the bowels of the earth, as I hadthought. I opened my eyes in my own room, and the first thing I fixedupon by accident, was the clock. The hands of the dial showed sevenminutes and a half past five!... I had thus passed through these mostterrible experiences, which it takes me hours to narrate, _in preciselyhalf a minute of time_!
But this, too, was an after-thought. For one brief instant Irecollected nothing of what I had seen. The interval between the time Ihad glanced at the clock when taking the mirror from the Yamabooshi'shand and this second glance, seemed to me merged in one. I was justopening my lips to hurry on the Yamabooshi with his experiment, whenthe full remembrance of what I had just seen flashed lightning-likeinto my brain. Uttering a cry of horror and despair, I felt as thoughthe whole creation were crushing me under its weight. For one moment Iremained speechless, the picture of human ruin amid a world of deathand desolation. My heart sank down in anguish: my doom was closed; anda hopeless gloom seemed to settle over the rest of my life for ever.
V
RETURN OF DOUBTS
Then came a reaction as sudden as my grief itself. A doubt arose in mymind, which forthwith grew into a fierce desire of denying the truth ofwhat I had seen. A stubborn resolution of treating the whole thing asan empty, meaningless dream, the effect of my overstrained mind, tookpossession of me. Yes; it was but a lying vision, an idiotic cheatingof my own senses, suggesting pictures of death and misery which hadbeen evoked by weeks of incertitude and mental depression.
"How could I see all that I have seen in less than half a minute?"--Iexclaimed. "The theory of dreams, the rapidity with which the materialchanges on which our ideas in vision depend, are excited in thehemispherical ganglia, is sufficient to account for the long series ofevents I have seemed to experience. In dream alone can the relationsof space and time be so completely annihilated. The Yamabooshi is fornothing in this disagreeable nightmare. He is only reaping that whichhas been sown by myself, and, by using some infernal drug, of which histribe have the secret, he has contrived to make me lose consciousnessfor a few seconds and see that vision--as lying as it is horrid. Avauntall such thoughts, I believe them not. In a few days there will be asteamer sailing for Europe.... I shall leave to-morrow!"
This disjointed monologue was pronounced by me aloud, regardless of thepresence of my respected friend the Bonze, Tamoora, and the Yamabooshi.The latter was standing before me in the same position as when heplaced the mirror in my hands, and kept looking at me calmly, I shouldperhaps say looking _through_ me, and in dignified silence. The Bonze,whose kind countenance was beaming with sympathy, approached me as hewould a sick child, and gently laying his hand on mine, and with tearsin his eyes, said: "Friend, you must not leave this city before youhave been completely purified of your contact with the lower Daij-Dzins(spirits), who had to be used to guide your inexperienced soul to theplaces it craved to see. The entrance to your Inner Self must be closedagainst their dangerous intrusion. Lose no time, therefore, my son, andallow the holy Master yonder, to purify you at once."
But nothing can be more deaf than anger once aroused. "The sap ofreason" could no longer "quench the fire of passion," and at thatmoment I was not fit to listen to his friendly voice. His is a faceI can never recall to my memory without genuine feeling; his, a nameI will ever pronounce with a sigh of emotion; but at that evermemorable hour when my passions were inflamed to white heat, I feltalmost a hatred for the kind, good old man, I could not forgive him hisinterference in the present event. Hence, for all answer, therefore, hereceived from me a stern rebuke, a violent protest on my part againstthe idea that I could ever regard the vision I had had, in any otherlight save that of an empty dream, and his Yamabooshi as anythingbetter than an impostor. "I will leave to-morrow, had I to forfeit mywhole fortune as a penalty"--I exclaimed, pale with rage and despair.
"You will repent it the whole of your life, if you do so before theholy man has shut every entrance in you against intruders ever onthe watch and ready to enter the open door," was the answer. "TheDaij-Dzins will have the best of you."
I interrupted him with a brutal laugh, and a still more brutallyphrased inquiry about the _fees_ I was expected to give the Yamabooshi,for his experiment with me.
"He needs no reward," was the reply. "The order he belongs to is therichest in the world, since its adherents need nothing, for they areabove all terrestrial and venal desires. Insult him not, the good manwho came to help you out of pure sympathy for your suffering, and torelieve you of mental agony."
But I would listen to no words of reason and wisdom. The spirit ofrebellion and pride had taken possession of me, and made me disregardevery feeling of personal friendship, or even of simple propriety.Luckily for me, on turning round to order the mendicant monk out of mypresence, I found he had gone.
I had not seen him move, and attributed his stealthy departure to fearat having been detected and understood.
Fool! blind, conceited idiot that I was! Why did I fail to recognizethe Yamabooshi's power, and that the peace of my whole life wasdeparting with him, from that moment for ever? But I did so fail.Even the fell demon of my long fears--uncertainty--was now entirelyoverpowered by that fiend scepticism--the silliest of all. A dull,morbid unbelief, a stubborn denial of the evidence of my own senses,and a determined will to regard the whole vision as a fancy of myoverwrought mind, had taken firm hold of me.
"My mind," I argued, "what is it? Shall I believe with thesuperstitious and the weak that this production of phosphorus and graymatter is indeed the superior part of me; that it can act and seeindependently of my physical senses? Never! As well believe in theplanetary 'intelligences' of the astrologer, as in the 'Daij-Dzins' ofmy credulous though well-meaning friend, the priest. As well confessone's belief in Jupiter and Sol, Saturn and Mercury, and that theseworthies guide their spheres and concern themselves with mortals,as to give one serious thought to the airy nonentities supposed tohave guided my 'soul' in its unpleasant dream! I loathe and laugh atthe absurd idea. I regard it as a personal insult to the intellectand rational reasoning powers of a man, to speak of invisiblecreatures, '_subjective_ intelligences,' and all that kind of insanesuperstition." In short, I begged my friend the Bonze to spare me hisprotests, and thus the unpleasantness of breaking with him for ever.
Thus I raved and argued before the venerable Japanese gentleman, doingall in my power to leave on his mind the indelible conviction of myhaving gone suddenly mad. But his admirable forbearance proved morethan equal to my idiotic passion; and he implored me once more, for thesake of my whole future, to submit to certain "necessary purificatoryrites."
"Never! Far rather dwell in air, rarefied to nothing by the air-pumpof wholesome unbelief, than in the dim fog of silly superstition,"I argued, paraphrazing Richter's remark. "I will not believe," Irepeated; "but as I can no longer bear such uncertainty about my sisterand her family, I will return by the first steamer to Europe."
This final determination upset my old acquaintance altogether. Hisearnest prayer not to depart before I had seen the Yamabooshi oncemore, received no attention from me.
"Friend of a foreign land!"--he cried, "I pray that you may not repentof your unbelief and rashness. May the 'Holy One' (Kwan-On, the Goddessof Mercy) protect you from the Dzins! For, since you refuse to submitto the process of purification at the hands of the holy Yamabooshi,he is powerless to defend you from the evil influences evoked by yourunbelief and defiance of truth. But let m
e, at this parting hour, Ibeseech you, let me, an older man who wishes you well, warn you oncemore and persuade you of things you are still ignorant of. May I speak?"
"Go on and have your say," was the ungracious assent. "But let me warnyou, in my turn, that nothing you can say can make of me a believer inyour disgraceful superstitions." This was added with a cruel feeling ofpleasure in bestowing one more needless insult.
But the excellent man disregarded this new sneer as he had all others.Never shall I forget the solemn earnestness of his parting words, thepitying, remorseful look on his face when he found that it was, indeed,all to no purpose, that by his kindly meant interference he had onlyled me to my destruction.
"Lend me your ear, good sir, for the last time," he began, "learn thatunless the holy and venerable man, who, to relieve your distress,opened your 'soul vision,' is permitted to complete his work, yourfuture life will, indeed, be little worth living. He has to safeguardyou against involuntary repetitions of visions of the same character.Unless you consent to it of your own free will, however, you will haveto be left in the power of _Forces_ which will harass and persecute youto the verge of insanity. Know that the development of 'Long Vision'(clairvoyance)--which is accomplished _at will_ only by those for whomthe Mother of Mercy, the great Kwan-On, has no secrets--must, in thecase of the beginner, be pursued with help of the air Dzins (elementalspirits) whose nature is soulless, and hence wicked. Know also that,while the Arihat, 'the destroyer of the enemy,' who has subjected andmade of these creatures his servants, has nothing to fear; he whohas no power over them becomes their slave. Nay, laugh not in yourgreat pride and ignorance, but listen further. During the time of thevision and while the inner perceptions are directed towards the eventsthey seek, the Daij-Dzin has the seer--when, like yourself, he is aninexperienced tyro--entirely in its power; and for the time being _thatseer is no longer himself_. He partakes of the nature of his 'guide.'The Daij-Dzin, which directs his inner sight, keeps his soul in durancevile, making of him, while the state lasts, a creature like itself.Bereft of his divine light, man is but a soulless being; hence duringthe time of such connection, he will feel no human emotions, neitherpity nor fear, love nor mercy."
"Hold!" I involuntarily exclaimed, as the words vividly broughtback to my recollection the indifference with which I had witnessedmy sister's despair and sudden loss of reason in my "hallucination.""Hold!... But no; it is still worse madness in me to heed or find anysense in your ridiculous tale! But if you knew it to be so dangerouswhy have advised the experiment at all?"--I added mockingly.
"It had to last but a few seconds, and no evil could have resulted fromit, had you kept your promise to submit to purification," was the sadand humble reply. "I wished you well, my friend, and my heart was nighbreaking to see you suffering day by day. The experiment is harmlesswhen directed by _one who knows_, and becomes dangerous only when thefinal precaution is neglected. It is the 'Master of Visions,' he whohas opened an entrance into your soul, who has to close it by using theSeal of Purification against any further and deliberate ingress of...."
"The 'Master of Visions,' forsooth!" I cried, brutally interruptinghim, "say rather the Master of Imposture!"
The look of sorrow on his kind old face was so intense and painful tobehold that I perceived I had gone too far; but it was too late.
"Farewell, then!" said the old bonze, rising; and after performing theusual ceremonials of politeness, Tamoora left the house in dignifiedsilence.
VI
I DEPART--BUT NOT ALONE
Several days later I sailed, but during my stay I saw my venerablefriend the Bonze, no more. Evidently on that last, and to me for evermemorable evening, he had been seriously offended with my more thanirreverent, my downright insulting remark about one whom he so justlyrespected. I felt sorry for him, but the wheel of passion and pridewas too incessantly at work to permit me to feel a single moment ofremorse. What was it that made me so relish the pleasure of wrath,that when, for one instant, I happened to lose sight of my supposedgrievance toward the Yamabooshi, I forthwith lashed myself back into akind of artificial fury against him. He had only accomplished what hehad been expected to do, and what he had tacitly promised; not only so,but it was I myself who had deprived him of the possibility of doingmore, even for my own protection, if I might believe the Bonze--a manwhom I knew to be thoroughly honorable and reliable. Was it regret athaving been forced by my pride to refuse the proffered precaution, orwas it the fear of remorse that made me rake together, in my heart,during those evil hours, the smallest details of the supposed insult tothat same suicidal pride? Remorse, as an old poet has aptly remarked,"is like the heart in which it grows:...
... if proud and gloomy, It is a poison-tree, that pierced to the utmost, Weeps only tears of blood."
Perchance, it was the indefinite fear of something of that sort whichcaused me to remain so obdurate, and led me to excuse, under the pleaof terrible provocation, even the unprovoked insults that I had heapedupon the head of my kind and all-forgiving friend, the priest. However,it was now too late in the day to recall the words of offence I haduttered; and all I could do was to promise myself the satisfaction ofwriting him a friendly letter, as soon as I reached home. Fool, blindfool, elated with insolent self-conceit, that I was! So sure did Ifeel, that my vision was due merely to some trick of the Yamabooshi,that I actually gloated over my coming triumph in writing to theBonze that I had been right in answering his sad words of partingwith an incredulous smile, as my sister and family were all in goodhealth--happy!
I had not been at sea for a week, before I had cause to remember hiswords of warning!
From the day of my experience with the magic mirror, I perceived agreat change in my whole state, and I attributed it, at first, to themental depression I had struggled against for so many months. Duringthe day I very often found myself absent from the surrounding scenes,losing sight for several minutes of things and persons. My nights weredisturbed, my dreams oppressive, and at times horrible. Good sailor Icertainly was; and besides, the weather was unusually fine, the oceanas smooth as a pond. Notwithstanding this, I often felt a strangegiddiness, and the familiar faces of my fellow-passengers assumed atsuch times the most grotesque appearances. Thus, a young German I usedto know well was once suddenly transformed before my eyes into his oldfather, whom we had laid in the little burial place of the Europeancolony some three years before. We were talking on deck of the defunctand of a certain business arrangement of his, when Max Grunner's headappeared to me as though it were covered with a strange film. A thickgreyish mist surrounded him, and gradually condensing around and uponhis healthy countenance, settled suddenly into the grim old head Ihad myself seen covered with six feet of soil. On another occasion,as the captain was talking of a Malay thief whom he had helped tosecure and lodge in jail, I saw near him the yellow, villainous faceof a man answering to his description. I kept silence about suchhallucinations; but as they became more and more frequent, I felt verymuch disturbed, though still attributing them to natural causes, suchas I had read about in medical books.
One night I was abruptly wakened by a long and loud cry of distress.It was a woman's voice, plaintive like that of a child, full of terrorand of helpless despair. I awoke with a start to find myself on land,in a strange room. A young girl, almost a child, was desperatelystruggling against a powerful middle-aged man, who had surprised her inher own room, and during her sleep. Behind the closed and locked door,I saw listening an old woman, whose face, notwithstanding the fiendishexpression upon it, seemed familiar to me, and I immediately recognizedit: it was the face of the Jewess who had adopted my niece in the dreamI had at Kioto. She had received gold to pay for her share in the foulcrime, and was now keeping her part of the covenant.... But who was thevictim? O horror unutterable! Unspeakable horror! When I realized thesituation after coming back to my normal state, I found it was my ownchild-niece.
But, as in my first vision, I felt in me nothing of the na
ture of thatdespair born of affection that fills one's heart, at the sight of awrong done to, or a misfortune befalling, those one loves; nothing buta manly indignation in the presence of suffering inflicted upon theweak and the helpless. I rushed, of course, to her rescue, and seizedthe wanton, brutal beast by the neck. I fastened upon him with powerfulgrasp, but, the man heeded it not, he seemed not even to feel my hand.The coward, seeing himself resisted by the girl, lifted his powerfularm, and the thick fist, coming down like a heavy hammer upon the sunnylocks, felled the child to the ground. It was with a loud cry of theindignation of a stranger, not with that of a tigress defending hercub, that I sprang upon the lewd beast and sought to throttle him.I then remarked, for the first time, that, a shadow myself, I wasgrasping but another shadow!....
My loud shrieks and imprecations had awakened the whole steamer. Theywere attributed to a nightmare. I did not seek to take anyone into myconfidence; but, from that day forward, my life became a long series ofmental tortures, I could hardly shut my eyes without becoming witnessof some horrible deed, some scene of misery, death or crime, whetherpast, present or even future--as I ascertained later on. It was asthough some mocking fiend had taken upon himself the task of makingme go through the vision of everything that was bestial, malignantand hopeless, in this world of misery. No radiant vision of beautyor virtue ever lit with the faintest ray these pictures of awe andwretchedness that I seemed doomed to witness. Scenes of wickedness, ofmurder, of treachery and of lust fell dismally upon my sight, and I wasbrought face to face with the vilest results of man's passions, themost terrible outcome of his material earthly cravings.
Had the Bonze foreseen, indeed, the dreary results, when he spoke ofDaij-Dzins to whom I left "an ingress" "a door open" in me? Nonsense!There must be some physiological, abnormal change in me. Once atNuremberg, when I have ascertained how false was the direction taken bymy fears--I dared not hope for no misfortune at all--these meaninglessvisions will disappear as they came. The very fact that my fancyfollows but one direction, that of pictures of misery, of humanpassions in their worst, material shape, is a proof to me, of theirunreality.
"If, as you say, man consists of one substance, matter, the objectof the physical senses; and if perception with its modes is only theresult of the organization of the brain, then should we be naturallyattracted but to the material, the earthly".... I thought I heard thefamiliar voice of the Bonze interrupting my reflections, and repeatingan often used argument of his in his discussions with me.
"There are two planes of visions before men," I again heard him say,"the plane of undying love and spiritual aspirations, the efflux fromthe eternal light; and the plane of restless, ever changing matter, thelight in which the misguided Daij-Dzins bathe."
VII
ETERNITY IN A SHORT DREAM
In those days I could hardly bring myself to realize, even for amoment, the absurdity of a belief in any kind of spirits, whether goodor bad. I now understood, if I did not believe, what was meant by theterm, though I still persisted in hoping that it would finally provesome physical derangement or nervous hallucination. To fortify myunbelief the more, I tried to bring back to my memory all the argumentsused against a faith in such superstitions, that I had ever read orheard. I recalled the biting sarcasms of Voltaire, the calm reasoningof Hume, and I repeated to myself _ad nauseam_ the words of Rousseau,who said that superstition, "the disturber of Society," could neverbe too strongly attacked. "Why should the sight, the phantasmagoria,rather"--I argued--"of that which we know in a waking sense to be false,come to affect us at all?" Why should--
Names, whose sense we see not Fray us with things that be not?
One day the old captain was narrating to us the various superstitionsto which sailors were addicted; a pompous English missionary remarkedthat Fielding had declared long ago that "superstition renders a man afool,"--after which he hesitated for an instant, and abruptly stopped.I had not taken any part in the general conversation; but no soonerhad the reverend speaker relieved himself of the quotation, than I sawin that halo of vibrating light, which I now noticed almost constantlyover every human head on the steamer, the words of Fielding's nextproposition--"and _scepticism makes him mad_."
I had heard and read of the claims of those who pretend to seership,that they often see the thoughts of people traced in the aura of thosepresent. Whatever "aura" may mean with others, I had now a personalexperience of the truth of the claim, and felt sufficiently disgustedwith the discovery! I--a _clairvoyant_! a new horror added to my life,an absurd and ridiculous gift developed, which I shall have to concealfrom all, feeling ashamed of it as if it were a case of leprosy. Atthis moment my hatred to the Yamabooshi, and even to my venerable oldfriend, the Bonze, knew no bounds. The former had evidently by hismanipulations over me while I was lying unconscious, touched someunknown physiological spring in my brain, and by loosing it had calledforth a faculty generally hidden in the human constitution; and it wasthe Japanese priest who had introduced the wretch into my house!
But my anger and my curses were alike useless, and could be of noavail. Moreover, we were already in European waters, and in a fewmore days we should be at Hamburg. Then would my doubts and fears beset at rest, and I should find, to my intense relief, that althoughclairvoyance, as regards the reading of human thoughts on the spot, mayhave some truth in it, the discernment of such events at a distance,as I had _dreamed of_, was an impossibility for human faculties.Notwithstanding all my reasoning, however, my heart was sick withfear, and full of the blackest presentiments; I _felt_ that my doomwas closing. I suffered terribly, my nervous and mental prostrationbecoming intensified day by day.
The night before we entered port I had a dream.
I fancied I was dead. My body lay cold and stiff in its last sleep,whilst its dying consciousness, which still regarded itself as "I,"realizing the event, was preparing to meet in a few seconds its ownextinction. It had been always my belief that as the brain preservedheat longer than any of the other organs, and was the last to cease itsactivity, the thought in it survived bodily death by several minutes.Therefore, I was not in the least surprised to find in my dream thatwhile the frame had already crossed that awful gulf "no mortal e'errepassed," its consciousness was still in the gray twilight, thefirst shadows of the great Mystery. Thus my THOUGHT wrapped, as Ibelieved, in the remnants, of its now fast retiring vitality, waswatching with intense and eager curiosity the approaches of its owndissolution, _i.e._, of its _annihilation_. "I" was hastening torecord my last impressions, lest the dark mantle of eternal oblivionshould envelope me, before I had time to feel and _enjoy_, the great,the supreme triumph of learning that my life-long convictions weretrue, that death is a complete and absolute cessation of consciousbeing. Everything around me was getting darker with every moment. Hugegray shadows were moving before my vision, slowly at first, then withaccelerated motion, until they commenced whirling around with an almostvertiginous rapidity. Then, as though that motion had taken place onlyfor purposes of brewing darkness, the object once reached, it slackenedits speed, and as the darkness became gradually transformed intointense blackness, it ceased altogether. There was nothing now withinmy immediate perceptions, but that fathomless black Space, as dark aspitch: to me it appeared as limitless and as silent as the shorelessOcean of Eternity upon which Time, the progeny of man's brain, is forever gliding, but which it can never cross.
Dream is defined by Cato as "but the image of our hopes and fears."Having never feared death when awake, I felt, in this dream of mine,calm and serene at the idea of my speedy end. In truth, I feltrather relieved at the thought--probably owing to my recent mentalsuffering--that the end of all, of doubt, of fear for those I loved,of suffering, and of every anxiety, was close at hand. The constantanguish that had been gnawing ceaselessly at my heavy, aching heartfor many a long and weary month, had now become unbearable; andif as Seneca thinks, death is but "the ceasing to be what we werebefore," it was better that I should die. The body is dead; "I," itscon
sciousness--that which is all that remains of me now, for a fewmoments longer--am preparing to follow. Mental perceptions will getweaker, more dim and hazy with every second of time, until the longedfor oblivion envelopes me completely in its cold shroud. Sweet is themagic hand of Death, the great World-Comforter; profound and dreamlessis sleep in its unyielding arms. Yea, verily, it is a welcomeguest.... A calm and peaceful haven amidst the roaring billows of theOcean of life, whose breakers lash in vain the rock-bound shores ofDeath. Happy the lonely bark that drifts into the still waters of itsblack gulf, after having been so long, so cruelly tossed about by theangry waves of sentient life. Moored in it for evermore, needing nolonger either sail or rudder, my bark will now find rest. Welcome then,O Death, at this tempting price; and fare thee well, poor body, which,having neither sought it nor derived pleasure from it, I now readilygive up!...
While uttering this death-chant to the prostrate form before me, I bentover, and examined it with curiosity. I felt the surrounding darknessoppressing me, weighing on me almost tangibly, and I fancied I foundin it the approach of the Liberator I was welcoming. And yet ... howvery strange! If real, final Death takes place in our consciousness;if after the bodily death, "I" and my conscious perceptions areone--how is it that these perceptions do not become weaker, why doesmy _brain_-action seem as vigorous as ever now ... that I am _defacto_ dead?... Nor does the usual feeling of anxiety, the "heavyheart" so-called, decrease in intensity; nay, it even seems to becomeworse ... unspeakably so!... How long it takes for full oblivion toarrive!... Ah, here's my body again!... Vanished out of sight for asecond or two, it reappears before me once more.... How white andghastly it looks! Yet ... its brain cannot be quite dead, since "I,"its consciousness, am still acting, since we two fancy that we stillare, that we live and think, disconnected from our creator and itsideating cell.
Suddenly I felt a strong desire to see how much longer the progressof dissolution was likely to last, before it placed its last seal onthe brain and rendered it inactive. I examined my brain in its cranialcavity, through the (to me) entirely transparent walls and roof of theskull, and even _touched the brain-matter_.... How, or with _whosehands_, I am now unable to say; but the impression of the slimy,intensely cold matter produced a very strong impression on me, in thatdream. To my great dismay, I found that the blood having entirelycongealed and the brain-tissues having themselves undergone a changethat would no longer permit any molecular action, it became impossiblefor me to account for the phenomena now taking place with myself.Here was I,--or my consciousness, which is all one--standing apparentlyentirely disconnected from my brain which could no longer function....But I had no time left for reflection. A new and most extraordinarychange in my perceptions had taken place and now engrossed my wholeattention.... What _does_ this signify?...
The same darkness was around me as before, a black, impenetrable space,extending in every direction. Only now, right before me, in whateverdirection I was looking, moving with me which way soever I moved,there was a gigantic round clock; a disk, whose large white face shoneominously on the ebony-black background. As I looked at its huge dial,and at the pendulum moving to and fro regularly and slowly in Space, asif its swinging meant to divide eternity, I saw its needles pointing to_seven minutes past five_. "The hour at which my torture had commencedat Kioto!" I had barely found time to think of the coincidence, when,to my unutterable horror, I felt myself going through the same, theidentical, process that I had been made to experience on that memorableand fatal day. I swam underground, dashing swiftly through the earth;I found myself once more in the pauper's grave and recognized mybrother-in-law in the mangled remains; I witnessed his terrible death;entered my sister's house; followed her agony, and saw her go mad. Iwent over the same scenes without missing a single detail of them. But,alas! I was no longer iron-bound in the calm indifference that had thenbeen mine, and which in that first vision had left me as unfeeling tomy great misfortune as if I had been a heartless thing of rock. Mymental tortures were now becoming beyond description and well-nighunbearable. Even the settled despair, the never ceasing anxiety I wasconstantly experiencing when awake, had become now, in my dream andin the face of this repetition of visions and events, as an hour ofdarkened sunlight compared to a deadly cyclone. Oh! how I suffered inthis wealth and pomp of infernal horrors, to which the conviction ofthe survival of man's consciousness after death--for in that dream Ifirmly believed that my body was dead--added the most terrifying of all!
The relative relief I felt, when, after going over the last scene,I saw once more the great white face of the dial before me was notof long duration. The long, arrow-shaped needle was pointing on thecolossal disk at--_seven minutes and a-half past five_ o'clock. But,before I had time to well realize the change, the needle moved slowlybackwards, stopped at precisely the seventh minute, and--O cursedfate!... I found myself driven into a repetition of the same seriesover again! Once more I swam underground, and saw, and heard, andsuffered every torture that hell can provide; I passed through everymental anguish known to man or fiend. I returned to see the fatal dialand its needle--after what appeared to me an eternity--moved, as before,only half a minute forward. I beheld it, with renewed terror, movingback again, and felt myself propelled forward anew. And so it wenton, and on, and on, time after time, in what seemed to me an endlesssuccession, a series which never had any beginning, nor would it everhave an end....
Worst of all; my consciousness, my "I," had apparently acquired thephenomenal capacity of trebling, quadrupling, and even of decuplatingitself. I lived, felt and suffered, in the same space of time, inhalf-a-dozen different places at once, passing over various eventsof my life, at different epochs, and under the most dissimilarcircumstances; though predominant over all was my _spiritual_experience at Kioto. Thus, as in the famous _fugue_ in _Don Giovanni_,the heart-rending notes of Elvira's _aria_ of despair ring high above,but interfere in no way with the melody of the minuet, the song ofseduction, and the chorus, so I went over and over my travailed woes,the feelings of agony unspeakable at the awful sights of my vision,the repetition of which blunted in no wise even a single pang of mydespair and horror; nor did these feelings weaken in the least scenesand events entirely disconnected with the first one, that I was livingthrough again, or interfere in any way the one with the other. It was amaddening experience! A series of contrapuntal, mental phantasmagoriafrom real life. Here was I, during the same half-a-minute of time,examining with cold curiosity the mangled remains of my sister'shusband; following with the same indifference the effects of thenews on her brain, as in my first Kioto vision, and feeling _at thesame time_ hell-torture for these very events, as when I returned toconsciousness. I was listening to the philosophical discourses of theBonze, every word of which I heard and understood, and was tryingto laugh him to scorn. I was again a child, then a youth, hearing mymother's and my sweet sister's voices, admonishing me and teaching dutyto all men. I was saving a friend from drowning, and was sneering athis aged father who thanks me for having saved a "soul" yet unpreparedto meet his Maker.
"Speak of _dual_ consciousness, you psycho-physiologists!"--I cried, inone of the moments when agony, mental and as it seemed to me physicalalso, had arrived at a degree of intensity which would have killeda dozen living men; "speak of your psychological and physiologicalexperiments, you schoolmen, puffed up with pride and book-learning!Here am I to give you the lie...." And now I was reading the works andholding converse with learned professors and lecturers, who had ledme to my fatal scepticism. And, while arguing the impossibility ofconsciousness divorced from its brain, I was shedding tears of bloodover the supposed fate of my nieces and nephews. More terrible thanall: I knew, _as only a liberated consciousness can know_, that all Ihad seen in my vision at Japan, and all that I was seeing and hearingover and over again now, was true in every point and detail, that itwas a long string of ghastly and terrible, still of real, actual, facts.
For, perhaps, the hundredth time, I had rivetted my attention onthe needle
of the clock, I had lost the number of my gyrations andwas fast coming to the conclusion that they would never stop, thatconsciousness, is, after all, indestructible, and that this was to bemy punishment in Eternity. I was beginning to realize from personalexperience how the condemned sinners would feel--"were not eternaldamnation a logical and mathematical impossibility in an everprogressing Universe"--I still found the force to argue. Yea, indeed; atthis hour of my ever-increasing agony, my consciousness--now my synonymfor "I"--had still the power of revolting at certain theological claims,of denying all their propositions, all--save ITSELF.... No; I denied theindependent nature of my consciousness no longer, for I knew it nowto be such. But is it _eternal_ withal? O thou incomprehensible andterrible Reality! But if thou art eternal, who then art thou?--sincethere is no deity, no God. Whence dost thou come, and when didst thoufirst appear, if thou art not a part of the cold body lying yonder?And whither dost thou lead me, who am thyself, and shall our thoughtand fancy have an end? What is thy real name, thou unfathomableREALITY, and impenetrable MYSTERY! Oh, I would fain annihilate thee...."Soul-Vision"!--who speaks of Soul, and whose voice is this?... It saysthat I see now for myself, that there is a Soul in man, after all.... Ideny this. My Soul, my vital Soul, or the Spirit of life, has expiredwith my body, with the gray matter of my brain. This "I" of mine, thisconsciousness, is not yet proven to me as eternal. Reincarnation, inwhich the Bonze felt so anxious I should believe may be true.... Whynot? Is not the flower born year after year from the same root? Hencethis "I" once separated from its brain, losing its balance, and callingforth such a host of visions ... before reincarnating....
I was again face to face with the inexorable, fatal clock. And as I waswatching its needle, I heard the voice of the Bonze, coming out of thedepths of its white face, saying: "In this case, I fear, _you wouldonly have to open and to shut the temple door, over and over again,during a period which, however short, would seem to you aneternity_."...
The clock had vanished, darkness made room for light, the voice of myold friend was drowned by a multitude of voices overhead on deck; andI awoke in my berth, covered with a cold perspiration, and faint withterror.
VIII
A TALE OF WOE
We were at Hamburg, and no sooner had I seen my partners, who couldhardly recognize me, than with their consent and good wishes I startedfor Nuremberg.
Half-an-hour after my arrival, the last doubt with regard to thecorrectness of my vision had disappeared. The reality was worse thanany expectations could have made it, and I was henceforward doomed tothe most desolate life. I ascertained that I had seen the terribletragedy with all its heartrending details. My brother-in-law, killedunder the wheels of a machine; my sister, insane, and now rapidlysinking towards her end; my niece--the sweet flower of nature's fairestwork--dishonored, in a den of infamy; the little children dead of acontagious disease in an orphanage; my last surviving nephew at sea,no one knew where. A whole house, a home of love and peace, scattered;and I, left alone, a witness of this world of death, of desolationand dishonor. The news filled me with infinite despair, and I sankhelpless before this wholesale, dire disaster, which rose before meall at once. The shock proved too much, and I fainted. The last thingI heard before entirely losing my consciousness was a remark of theBurgmeister: "Had you, before leaving Kioto, telegraphed to the cityauthorities of your whereabouts, and of your intention of coming hometo take charge of your young relatives, we might have placed themelsewhere, and thus have saved them from their fate. No one knew thatthe children had a well-to-do relative. They were left paupers andhad to be dealt with as such. They were comparatively strangers inNuremberg, and under the unfortunate circumstances you could hardlyhave expected anything else.... I can only express my sincere sorrow."
It was this terrible knowledge that I might, at any rate, have savedmy young niece from her unmerited fate, but that through my neglect Ihad not done so, that was killing me. Had I but followed the friendlyadvice of the Bonze, Tamoora, and telegraphed to the authorities someweeks previous to my return much might have been avoided. It was allthis, coupled with the fact that I could no longer doubt clairvoyanceand clairaudience--the possibility of which I had so long denied--thatbrought me so heavily down upon my knees. I could avoid the censureof my fellow-creatures, but I could never escape the stings of myconscience, the reproaches of my own aching heart--no, not as long as Ilived. I cursed my stubborn scepticism, my denial of facts, my earlyeducation, I cursed myself, and the whole world....
For several days I contrived not to sink beneath my load, for I hada duty to perform to the dead and to the living. But my sister oncerescued from the pauper's asylum, placed under the care of the bestphysicians, with her daughter to attend to her last moments, andthe Jewess, whom I had brought to confess her crime, safely lodgedin jail--my fortitude and strength suddenly abandoned me. Hardly aweek after my arrival I was myself no better than a raving maniac,helpless in the strong grip of a brain fever. For several weeks I laybetween life and death, the terrible disease defying the skill of thebest physicians. At last my strong constitution prevailed, and--to mylife-long sorrow--they proclaimed me saved.
I heard the news with a bleeding heart. Doomed to drag the loathsomeburden of life henceforth alone, and in constant remorse; hoping forno help or remedy on earth, and still refusing to believe in thepossibility of anything better than a short survival of consciousnessbeyond the grave, this unexpected return to life added only one moredrop of gall to my bitter feelings. They were hardly soothed by theimmediate return, during the first days of my convalescence, of thoseunwelcome and unsought for visions, whose correctness and reality Icould deny no more. Alas the day! they were no longer in my sceptical,blind mind--
The children of an idle brain Begot of nothing but vain fantasy;
but always the faithful photographs of the real woes and sufferingsof my fellow creatures, of my best friends.... Thus I found myselfdoomed, whenever I was left for a moment alone, to the helplesstorture of a chained Prometheus. During the still hours of night,as though held by some pitiless iron hand, I found myself led to mysister's bedside, forced to watch there hour after hour, and see thesilent disintegration of her wasted organism; to witness and feel thesufferings that her own tenantless brain could no longer reflect orconvey to her perceptions. But there was something still more horribleto barb the dart that could never be extricated. I had to look, byday, at the childish innocent face of my young niece, so sublimelysimple and guileless in her pollution; and to witness, by night, howthe full knowledge and recollection of her dishonor, of her young lifenow for ever blasted, came to her in her dreams, as soon as she wasasleep. These dreams took an objective form to me, as they had doneon the steamer; I had to live them over again, night after night,and feel the same terrible despair. For now, since I believed in thereality of seership, and had come to the conclusion that in our bodieslies hidden, as in the caterpillar, the chrysalis which may containin its turn the butterfly--the symbol of the soul--I no longer remainedindifferent, as of yore, to what I witnessed in my Soul-life. Somethinghad suddenly developed in me, had broken loose from its icy cocoon.Evidently I no longer saw only in consequence of the identification ofmy inner nature with a Daij-Dzin; my visions arose in consequence of adirect personal psychic development, the fiendish creatures only takingcare that I should see nothing of an agreeable or elevating nature.Thus, now, not an unconscious pang in my dying sister's emaciated body,not a thrill of horror in my niece's restless sleep at the recollectionof the crime perpetrated upon her, an innocent child, but found aresponsive echo in my bleeding heart. The deep fountain of sympatheticlove and sorrow had gushed out from the physical heart, and was nowloudly echoed by the awakened soul separated from the body. Thus had Ito drain the cup of misery to the very dregs! Woe is me, it was a dailyand nightly torture! Oh, how I mourned over my proud folly; how I waspunished for having neglected to avail myself at Kioto of the profferedpurification, for now I had come to believe even in the efficacy ofthe latter
. The Daij-Dzin had indeed obtained control over me; and thefiend had let loose all the dogs of hell upon his victim....
At last the awful gulf was reached and crossed. The poor insanemartyr dropped into her dark, and now welcome grave, leaving behindher, but for a few short months, her young, her first-born, daughter.Consumption made short work of that tender girlish frame. Hardly a yearafter my arrival, I was left alone in the whole wide world, my onlysurviving nephew having expressed a desire to follow his sea-faringcareer.
And now, the sequel of my sad, sad story is soon told. A wreck, aprematurely old man, looking at thirty as though sixty winters hadpassed over my doomed head, and owing to the never-ceasing visions,myself daily on the verge of insanity, I suddenly formed a desperateresolution. I would return to Kioto and seek out the Yamabooshi. Iwould prostrate myself at the feet of the holy man, and would notleave him until he had recalled the Frankenstein he had raised, theFrankenstein with whom at the time, it was I, myself, who would notpart, through my insolent pride and unbelief.
Three months later I was in my Japanese home again, and I at oncesought out my old, venerable Bonze, Tamoora Hideyeri, I now imploredhim to take me without an hour's delay, to the Yamabooshi, the innocentcause of my daily tortures. His answer but placed the last, the supremeseal on my doom and tenfold intensified my despair. The Yamabooshi hadleft the country for lands unknown! He had departed one fine morninginto the interior, on a pilgrimage, and according to custom, would beabsent, unless natural death shortened the period, for no less thanseven years!...
In this mischance, I applied for help and protection to other learnedYamabooshis; and though well aware how useless it was in my case toseek efficient cure from any other "adept," my excellent old frienddid everything he could to help me in my misfortune. But it was tono purpose, and the canker-worm of my life's despair could not bethoroughly extricated. I found from them that not one of these learnedmen could promise to relieve me entirely from the demon of clairvoyantobsession. It was he who raised certain Daij-Dzins, calling on them toshow futurity, or things that had already come to pass, who alone hadfull control over them. With kind sympathy, which I had now learnedto appreciate, the holy men invited me to join the group of theirdisciples, and learn from them what I could do for myself. "Will alone,faith in your own soul powers, can help you now," they said. "But itmay take several years to undo even a part of the great mischief;"they added. "A Daij-Dzin is easily dislodged in the beginning; if leftalone, he takes possession of a man's nature, and it becomes almostimpossible to uproot the fiend without killing his victim."
Persuaded that there was nothing but this left for me to do, Igratefully assented, doing my best to believe in all that these holymen believed in, and yet ever failing to do so in my heart. The demonof unbelief and all-denial seemed rooted in me more firmly even thanthe Daij-Dzin. Still I did all I could do, decided as I was not tolose my last chance of salvation. Therefore, I proceeded without delayto free myself from the world and my commercial obligations, in orderto live for several years an independent life. I settled my accountswith my Hamburg partners and severed my connection with the firm.Notwithstanding considerable financial losses resulting from such aprecipitate liquidation, I found myself, after closing the accounts,a far richer man than I had thought I was. But wealth had no longerany attraction for me, now that I had no one to share it with, no oneto work for. Life had become a burden; and such was my indifference tomy future, that while giving away all my fortune to my nephew--in casehe should return alive from his sea voyage--I should have neglectedentirely even a small provision for myself, had not my native partnerinterfered and insisted upon my making it. I now recognized withLao-tze, that Knowledge was the only firm hold for a man to trust to,as it is the only one that cannot be shaken by any tempest. Wealthis a weak anchor in days of sorrow, and self-conceit the most fatalcounsellor. Hence I followed the advice of my friends, and laid asidefor myself a modest sum, which would be sufficient to assure me a smallincome for life, or if I ever left my new friends and instructors.Having settled my earthly accounts and disposed of my belongings atKioto, I joined the "Masters of the Long Vision," who took me to theirmysterious abode. There I remained for several years, studying veryearnestly and in the most complete solitude, seeing no one but a few ofthe members of our religious community.
Many are the mysteries of nature that I have fathomed since then, andmany a secret folio from the library of Tzion-ene have I devoured,obtaining thereby mastery over several kinds of invisible beingsof a lower order. But the great secret of power over the terribleDaij-Dzin I could not get. It remains in the possession of a verylimited number of the highest Initiates of Lao-tze, the greatmajority of the Yamabooshis themselves being ignorant how to obtainsuch mastery over the dangerous Elemental. One who would reach suchpower of control would have to become entirely identified with theYamabooshis, to accept their views and beliefs, and to attain thehighest degree of Initiation. Very naturally, I was found unfit tojoin the Fraternity, owing to many insurmountable reasons besides mycongenital and ineradicable scepticism, though I tried hard to believe.Thus, partially relieved of my affliction and taught how to conjure theunwelcome visions away, I still remained, and do remain to this day,helpless to prevent their forced appearance before me now and then.
It was after assuring myself of my unfitness for the exalted positionof an independent Seer and Adept that I reluctantly gave up any furthertrial. Nothing had been heard of the holy man, the first innocent causeof my misfortune; and the old Bonze himself, who occasionally visitedme in my retreat, either could not, or would not, inform me of thewhereabouts of the Yamabooshi. When, therefore, I had to give up allhope of his ever relieving me entirely from my fatal gift, I resolvedto return to Europe, to settle in solitude for the rest of my life.With this object in view, I purchased through my late partners theSwiss _chalet_ in which my hapless sister and I were born, where I hadgrown up under her care, and selected it for my future hermitage.
When bidding me farewell for ever on the steamer which took me backto my fatherland, the good old Bonze tried to console me for mydisappointments. "My son," he said, "regard all that happened to youas your _Karma_--a just retribution. No one who has subjected himselfwillingly to the power of a Daij-Dzin can ever hope to become a _Rahat_(an Adept), a high-souled Yamabooshi--unless immediately purified.At best, as in your case, he may become fitted to oppose and tosuccessfully fight off the fiend. _Like a scar left after a poisonouswound, the trace of a Daij-Dzin can never be effaced from the Souluntil purified by a new rebirth._ Withal, feel not dejected, but be ofgood cheer in your affliction, since it has led you to acquire trueknowledge, and to accept many a truth you would have otherwise rejectedwith contempt. And of this priceless knowledge, acquired throughsuffering and personal efforts--no Daij-Dzin can ever deprive you.Fare thee well, then, and may the Mother of Mercy, the great Queen ofHeaven, afford you comfort and protection."
We parted, and since then I have led the life of an anchorite, inconstant solitude and study. Though still occasionally afflicted,I do not regret the years I have passed under the instruction ofthe Yamabooshis, but feel gratified for the knowledge received. Ofthe priest Tamoora Hideyeri I think always with sincere affectionand respect. I corresponded regularly with him to the day of hisdeath; an event which, with all its to me painful details, I had theunthanked-for privilege of witnessing across the seas, at the very hourin which it occurred.