Ninth vibration and other stories — The Ninth Vibration Part 07
On the further bank a young man in a strange diadem or miter of jewels, bare-breasted and beautiful, stood among the flowering oleanders, one foot lightly crossed over the other as he stood.
He was like an image of pale radiant gold, and I could have sworn that the light came from within rather than fell upon him, for the night was very dark.
He held the flute to his lips, and as I looked, I became aware that the noise of the rushing water was tapering off into a murmur scarcely louder than that of a summer bee in the heart of a rose.
Therefore the music rose like a fountain of crystal drops, cold, clear, and of an entrancing sweetness, and the face above it was such that I had no power to turn my eyes away.
How shall I say what it was?
All I had ever desired, dreamed, hoped, prayed, looked at me from the remote beauty of the eyes and with the most persuasive gentleness entreated me, rather than commanded to follow fearlessly and win.
But these are words, and words shaped in the rough mould of thought cannot convey the deep desire that would have hurled me to his feet if Vanna had not held me with a firm restraining hand.
Looking up in adoring love to the dark face was a ring of woodland creatures.
I thought I could distinguish the white clouded robe of a snow-leopard, the soft clumsiness of a young bear, and many more, but these shifted and blurred like dream creatures--I could not be sure of them nor define their numbers.
The eyes of the Player looked down upon their passionate delight with careless kindness.
Dim images passed through my mind.
Orpheus--No, this was no Greek.
Pan-yet again, No. Where were the pipes, the goat hoofs?
The young Dionysos--No, there were strange jewels instead of his vines.
And then Vanna’s voice said as if from a great distance;
“Krishna--the Beloved.
” And I said aloud, “I see!
” And even as I said it the whole picture blurred together like a dream, and I was alone in the pavilion and the water was foaming past me.
Had I walked in my sleep, I thought, as I made my way hack?
As I gained the garden gate, before me, like a snowflake, I saw the Ninefold Flower.
When I told her next day, speaking of it as a dream, she said simply;
“They have opened the door to you.
You will not need me soon.
“I shall always need you.
You have taught me everything.
I could see nothing last night until you took my hand.
” “I was not there,” she said smiling.
“It was only the thought of me, and you can have that when I am very far away.
I was sleeping in my tent.
What you called in me then you can always call, even if I am--dead.
” “That is a word which is beginning to have no meaning for me.
You have said things to me--no, thought them, that have made me doubt if there is room in the universe for the thing we have called death.
” She smiled her sweet wise smile.
“Where we are death is not.
Where death is we are not.
But you will understand better soon.
” Our march curving took us by the Mogul gardens of Achibal, and the glorious ruins of the great Temple at Martund, and so down to Bawan with its crystal waters and that loveliest camping ground beside them.
A mighty grove of chenar trees, so huge that I felt as if we were in a great sea cave where the air is dyed with the deep shadowy green of the inmost ocean, and the murmuring of the myriad leaves was like a sea at rest.
I looked up into the noble height and my memory of Westminster dwindled, for this led on and up to the infinite blue, and at night the stars hung like fruit upon the branches.
The water ran with a great joyous rush of release from the mountain behind, but was first received in a broad basin full of sacred fish and reflecting a little temple of Maheshwara and one of Surya the Sun.
Here in this basin the water lay pure and still as an ecstasy, and beside it was musing the young Brahman priest who served the temple.
Since I had joined Vanna I had begun with her help to study a little Hindustani, and with an aptitude for language could understand here and there.
I caught a word or two as she spoke with him that startled me, when the high-bred ascetic face turned serenely upon her, and he addressed her as “My sister,” adding a sentence beyond my learning, but which she willingly translated later.
--“May He who sits above the Mysteries, have mercy upon thy rebirth.
” She said afterwards;
“How beautiful some of these men are.
It seems a different type of beauty from ours, nearer to nature and the old gods.
Look at that priest--the tall figure, the clear olive skin, the dark level brows, the long lashes that make a soft gloom about the eyes--eyes that have the fathomless depth of a deer’s, the proud arch of the lip.
I think there is no country where aristocracy is more clearly marked than in India.
The Brahmans are aristocrats of the world.
You see it is a religious aristocracy as well.
It has everything that can foster pride and exclusiveness.
They spring from the Mouth of Deity.
They are His word incarnate.
Not many kings are of the Brahman caste, and the Brahmans look down upon them from Sovereign heights.
I have known men who would not eat with their own rulers who would have drunk the water that washed the Brahmans’ feet.
” She took me that day, the Brahman with us, to see a cave in the mountain.
We climbed up the face of the cliff to where a little tree grew on a ledge, and the black mouth yawned.
We went in and often it was so low we had to stoop, leaving the sunlight behind until it was like a dim eye glimmering in the velvet blackness.
The air was dank and cold and presently obscene with the smell of bats, and alive with their wings, as they came sweeping about us, gibbering and squeaking.
I thought of the rush of the ghosts, blown like dead leaves in the Odyssey.
And then a small rock chamber branched off, and in this, lit by a bit of burning wood, we saw the bones of a holy man who lived and died there four hundred years ago.
Think of it!
He lived there always, with the slow dropping of water from the dead weight of the mountain above his head, drop by drop tolling the minutes away: the little groping feet through the cave that would bring him food and drink, hurrying into the warmth and sunlight again, and his only companion the sacred Lingam which means the Creative Energy that sets the worlds dancing for joy round the sun--that, and the black solitude to sit down beside him.
Surely his bones can hardly be dryer and colder now than they were then!
There must be strange ecstasies in such a life--wild visions in the dark, or it could never be endured.
And so, in marches of about ten miles a day, we came to Pahlgam on the banks of the dancing Lidar.
There was now only three weeks left of the time she had promised.
After a few days at Pahlgam the march would turn and bend its way back to Srinagar, and to--what?
I could not believe it was to separation--in her lovely kindness she had grown so close to me that, even for the sake of friendship, I believed our paths must run together to the end, and there were moments when I could still half convince myself that I had grown as necessary to her as she was to me.
No--not as necessary, for she was life and soul to me, but a part of her daily experience that she valued and would not easily part with.
That evening we were sitting outside the tents, near the camp fire, of pine logs and cones, the leaping flames making the night beautiful with gold and leaping sparks, in an attempt to reach the mellow splendours of the moon.
The men, in various attitudes of rest, were lying about, and one had been telling a story which had just ended in excitement and loud applause.
“These are Mahomedans,” said Vanna, “and it is only a story of love and fighting like the Arabian Nights.
If they had been Hindus, it might well have been of Krishna or of Rama and Sita.
Their faith comes from an earlier time and they still see visions.
The Moslem is a hard practical faith for men--men of the world too.
It is not visionary now, though it once had its great mysteries.
” “I wish you would tell me what you think of the visions or apparitions of the gods that are seen here.
Is it all illusion?
Tell me your thought.
” “How difficult that is to answer.
I suppose if love and faith are strong enough they will always create the vibrations to which the greater vibrations respond, and so make God in their own image at any time or place.
But that they call up what is the truest reality I have never doubted.
There is no shadow without a substance.
The substance is beyond us but under certain conditions the shadow is projected and we see it.
“Have I seen or has it been dream?
” “I cannot tell.
It may have been the impress of my mind on yours, for I see such things always.
You say I took your hand?
” “Take it now.
” She obeyed, and instantly, as I felt the firm cool clasp, I heard the rain of music through the pines--the Flute Player was passing.
She dropped it smiling and the sweet sound ceased.
“You see!
How can I tell what you have seen?
You will know better when I am gone.
You will stand alone then.
” “You will not go--you cannot.
I have seen how you have loved all this wonderful time.
I believe it has been as dear to you as to me.
And every day I have loved you more.
I depend upon you for everything that makes life worth living.
You could not--you who are so gentle--you could not commit the senseless cruelty of leaving me when you have taught me to love you with every beat of my heart.
I have been patient--I have held myself in, but I must speak now.
Marry me, and teach me.
I know nothing.
You know all I need to know.
For pity’s sake be my wife.
” I had not meant to say it; it broke from me in the firelight moonlight with a power that I could not stay.
She looked at me with a disarming gentleness.
“Is this fair?
Do you remember how at Peshawar I told you I thought it was a dangerous experiment, and that it would make things harder for you.
But you took the risk like a brave man because you felt there were things to be gained--knowledge, insight, beauty.
Have you not gained them?
” “Yes.
Absolutely.
” “Then, is it all loss if I go?
” “Not all.
But loss I dare not face.
” “I will tell you this.
I could not stay if I would.
Do you remember the old man on the way to Vernag?
He told me that I must very soon take up an entirely new life.
I have no choice, though if I had I would still do it.
” There was silence and down a long arcade, without any touch of her hand I heard the music, receding with exquisite modulations to a very great distance, and between the pillared stems, I saw a faint light.
“Do you wish to go?
” “Entirely.
But I shall not forget you, Stephen.
I will tell you something.
For me, since I came to India, the gate that shuts us out at birth has opened.
How shall I explain?
Do you remember Kipling’s ‘Finest Story in the World’?
” “Yes.
Fiction!
” “Not fiction--true, whether he knew it or no. But for me the door has opened wide.
First, I remembered piecemeal, with wide gaps, then more connectedly.
Then, at the end of the first year, I met one day at Cawnpore, an ascetic, an old man of great beauty and wisdom, and he was able by his own knowledge to enlighten mine.
Not wholly--much has come since then.
Has come, some of it in ways you could not understand now, but much by direct sight and hearing.
Long, long ago I lived in Peshawar, and my story was a sorrowful one.
I will tell you a little before I go.
” “I hold you to your promise.
What is there I cannot believe when you tell me?
But does that life put you altogether away from me?
Was there no place for me in any of your memories that has drawn us together now?
Give me a little hope that in the eternal pilgrimage there is some bond between us and some rebirth where we may met again.
” “I will tell you that also before we part.
I have grown to believe that you do love me--and therefore love something which is infinitely above me.
” “And do you love me at all?
Am I nothing, Vanna--Vanna?
” “My friend,” she said, and laid her hand on mine.
A silence, and then she spoke, very low.
“You must be prepared for very great change, Stephen, and yet believe that it does not really change things at all.
See how even the gods pass and do not change!
The early gods of India are gone and Shiva, Vishnu, Krishna have taken their places and are one and the same.
The old Buddhist stories say that in heaven “The flowers of the garland the God wore are withered, his robes of majesty are waxed old and faded;
he falls from his high estate, and is re-born into a new life.
” But he lives still in the young God who is born among men.
The gods cannot die, nor can we nor anything that has life.
Now I must go in.
” I sat long in the moonlight thinking.
The whole camp was sunk in sleep and the young dawn was waking upon the peaks when I turned in.
The days that were left we spent in wandering up the Lidar River to the hills that are the first ramp of the ascent to the great heights.
We found the damp corners where the mushrooms grow like pearls--the mushrooms of which she said--“To me they have always been fairy things.
To see them in the silver-grey dew of the early mornings--mysteriously there like the manna in the desert--they are elfin plunder, and as a child I was half afraid of them.
No wonder they are the darlings of folklore, especially in Celtic countries where the Little People move in the starlight.
Strange to think they are here too among strange gods!
” We climbed to where the wild peonies bloom in glory that few eyes see, and the rosy beds of wild sweet strawberries ripen.
Every hour brought with it some new delight, some exquisiteness of sight or of words that I shall remember for ever.
She sat one day on a rock, holding the sculptured leaves and massive seed-vessels of some glorious plant that the Kashmiris believe has magic virtues hidden in the seeds of pure rose embedded in the white down.
“If you fast for three days and eat nine of these in the Night of No Moon, you can rise on the air light as thistledown and stand on the peak of Haramoukh.
And on Haramoukh, as you know it is believed, the gods dwell.
There was a man here who tried this enchantment.
He was a changed man for ever after, wandering and muttering to himself and avoiding all human intercourse as far as he could.
He was no Kashmiri--A Jat from the Punjab, and they showed him to me when I was here with the Meryons, and told me he would speak to none.
But I knew he would speak to me, and he did.
” “Did he tell you anything of what he had seen in the high world up yonder?
” “He said he had seen the Dream of the God.
I could not get more than that.
But there are many people here who believe that the Universe as we know it is but an image in the dream of Ishvara, the Universal Spirit--in whom are all the gods--and that when He ceases to dream we pass again into the Night of Brahm, and all is darkness until the Spirit of God moves again on the face of the waters.
There are few temples to Brahm.
He is above and beyond all direct worship.
” “Do you think he had seen anything?
” “What do I know?
Will you eat the seeds?
The Night of No Moon will soon be here.
” She held out the seed-vessels, laughing.
I write that down but how record the lovely light of kindliness in her eyes--the almost submissive gentleness that yet was a defense stronger than steel.
I never knew--how should I?
--whether she was sitting by my side or heavens away from me in her own strange world.
But always she was a sweetness that I could not reach, a cup of nectar that I might not drink, unalterably her own and never mine, and yet--my friend.
She showed me the wild track up into the mountains where the Pilgrims go to pay their devotions at the Great God’s shrine in the awful heights, regretting that we were too early for that most wonderful sight.
Above where we were sitting the river fell in a tormented white cascade, crashing and feathering into spray-dust of diamonds.
An eagle was flying above it with a mighty spread of wings that seemed almost double-jointed in the middle--they curved and flapped so wide and free.
The fierce head was outstretched with the rake of a plundering galley as he swept down the wind, seeking his meat from God, and passed majestic from our sight.
The valley beneath us was littered with enormous boulders spilt from the ancient hollows of the hills.
It must have been a great sight when the giants set them trundling down in work or play!
--I said this to Vanna, who was looking down upon it with meditative eyes.
She roused herself.
“Yes, this really is Giant-Land up here--everything is so huge.
And when they quarrel up in the heights--in Jotunheim--and the black storms come down the valleys it is like colossal laughter or clumsy boisterous anger.
And the Frost giants are still at work up there with their great axes of frost and rain.
They fling down the side of a mountain or make fresh ways for the rivers.
About sixty years ago--far above here--they tore down a mountain side and damned up the mighty Indus, so that for months he was a lake, shut back in the hills.
But the river giants are no less strong up here in the heights of the world, and lie lay brooding and hiding his time.
And then one awful day he tore the barrier down and roared down the valley carrying death and ruin with him, and swept away a whole Sikh army among other unconsidered trifles.
That must have been a soul-shaking sight.
” She spoke on, and as she spoke I saw.
What are her words as I record them?
Stray dead leaves pressed in a book--the life and grace dead.
Yet I record, for she taught me what I believe the world should learn, that the Buddhist philosophers are right when they teach that all forms of what we call matter are really but aggregates of spiritual units, and that life itself is a curtain hiding reality as the vast veil of day conceals from our sight the countless orbs of space.
So that the purified mind even while prisoned in the body, may enter into union with the Real and, according to attainment, see it as it is.
She was an interpreter because she believed this truth profoundly.
She saw the spiritual essence beneath the lovely illusion of matter, and the air about her was radiant with the motion of strange forces for which the dull world has many names aiming indeed at the truth, but falling--O how far short of her calm perception!
She was indeed of a Household higher than the Household of Faith.
She had received enlightenment.
She beheld with open eyes.
Next day our camp was struck and we turned our faces again to Srinagar and to the day of parting.
I set down but one strange incident of our journey, of which I did not speak even to her.
We were camping at Bijbehara, awaiting our house boat, and the site was by the Maharaja’s lodge above the little town.
It was midnight and I was sleepless--the shadow of the near future was upon me.
I wandered down to the lovely old wooded bridge across the Jhelum, where the strong young trees grow up from the piles.
Beyond it the moon was shining on the ancient Hindu remains close to the new temple, and as I stood on the bridge I could see the figure of a man in deepest meditation by the ruins.
He was no European.
I saw the straight dignified folds of the robes.
But it was not surprising he should be there and I should have thought no more of it, had I not heard at that instant from the further side of the river the music of the Flute.
I cannot hope to describe that music to any who have not heard it.
Suffice it to say that where it calls he who hears must follow whether in the body or the spirit.
Nor can I now tell in which I followed.
One day it will call me across the River of Death, and I shall ford it or sink in the immeasurable depths and either will be well.
But immediately I was at the other side of the river, standing by the stone Bull of Shiva where he kneels before the Symbol, and looking steadfastly upon me a few paces away was a man in the dress of a Buddhist monk.
He wore the yellow robe that leaves one shoulder bare;
his head was bare also and he held in one hand a small bowl like a stemless chalice.
I knew I was seeing a very strange inexplicable sight--one that in Kashmir should be incredible, but I put wonder aside for I knew now that I was moving in the sphere where the incredible may well be the actual.
His expression was of the most unbroken calm.
If I compare it to the passionless gaze of the Sphinx I misrepresent, for the Riddle of the Sphinx still awaits solution, but in this face was a noble acquiescence and a content that had it vibrated must have passed into joy.
Words or their equivalent passed between us.
I felt his voice.
“You have heard the music of the Flute?
” “I have heard.
” “What has it given?
” “A consuming longing.
” “It is the music of the Eternal.
The creeds and the faiths are the words that men have set to that melody.
Listening, it will lead you to Wisdom.
Day by day you will interpret more surely.
” “I cannot stand alone.
” “You will not need.
What has led you will lead you still.
Through many births it has led you.
How should it fail?
” “What should I do?
” “Go forward.
” “What should I shun?
” “Sorrow and fear.
” “What should I seek?
” “Joy.
” “And the end?
” “Joy.
Wisdom.
They are the Light and Dark of the Divine.
” A cold breeze passed and touched my forehead.
I was still standing in the middle of the bridge above the water gliding to the Ocean, and there was no figure by the Bull of Shiva.
I was alone.
I passed back to the tents with the shudder that is not fear but akin to death upon me.
I knew I had been profoundly withdrawn from what we call actual life, and the return is dread.
The days passed as we floated down the river to Srinagar.
On board the Kedarnath, now lying in our first berth beneath the chenars near and yet far from the city, the last night had come.
Next morning I should begin the long ride to Baramula and beyond that barrier of the Happy Valley down to Murree and the Punjab.
Where afterwards?
I neither knew nor cared.
My lesson was before me to be learned.
I must try to detach myself from all I had prized--to say to my heart it was but a loan and no gift, and to cling only to the imperishable.
And did I as yet certainly know more than the A B C of the hard doctrine by which I must live?
“Que vivre est difficile, O mon cocur fatigue!
”--an immense weariness possessed me--a passive grief.
Vanna would follow later with the wife of an Indian doctor.
I believed she was bound for Lahore but on that point she had not spoken certainly and I felt we should not meet again.
And now my packing was finished, and, as far as my possessions went, the little cabin had the soulless emptiness that comes with departure.
I was enduring as best I could.
If she had held loyally to her pact, could I do less.
Was she to blame for my wild hope that in the end she would relent and step down to the household levels of love?
She sat by the window--the last time I should see the moonlit banks and her clear face against them.
I made and won my fight for the courage of words.
“And now I’ve finished everything--thank goodness!
and we can talk.
Vanna--you will write to me?
” “Once.
I promise that.
” “Only once?
Why?
I counted on your words.
” “I want to speak to you of something else now.
I want to tell you a memory.
But look first at the pale light behind the Takht-i-Suliman.
” So I had seen it with her.
So I should not see it again.
We watched until a line of silver sparkled on the black water, and then she spoke again.
“Stephen, do you remember in the ruined monastery near Peshawar, how I told you of the young Abbot, who came down to Peshawar with a Chinese pilgrim?
And he never returned.
