Fashionable Philosophy, and Other Sketches Part 5

"Ditto, ditto, to P---, executed by the knife by Croppo's order, for disobedience.

"M--- and F---, and D---, three new members, joined to-day: confessed them, and received the usual fees."

He was a dark, beetle-browed-looking ruffian, this holy man; and the colonel, when he had finished examining his book of prayer and crime, tossed it to me, saying,--"There! that will show your friends in England the kind of politicians we make war against. Ha! what have we here? This is more serious." And he unfolded a piece of paper which had been concealed in the breast of the priest. "This contains a little valuable information," he added, with a grim smile. "n.o.body like priests and women for carrying about political secrets, so you may have made a valuable capture," and he turned to where I stood with Valeria; "let her be carefully searched."

Now the colonel was a very pompous man, and the doc.u.ment he had just discovered on the priest added to his sense of self-importance. When, therefore, a large, carefully folded paper was produced from the neighbourhood of Valeria's lovely bosom, his eyes sparkled with antic.i.p.ation. "Ho, ho!" he exclaimed, as he clutched it eagerly, "the plot is thickening!" and he spread out triumphantly, before he had himself seen what it was, the exquisitely drawn portrait of a donkey.

There was a suppressed t.i.tter, which exploded into a shout when the bystanders looked into the colonel's indignant face. I only was affected differently, as my gaze fell upon this touching evidence of dear Valeria's love for me, and I glanced at her tenderly. "This has a deeper significance than you think for," said the colonel, looking round angrily. "Croppo's wife does not carefully secrete a drawing like that on her person for nothing. See, it is done by no common artist. It means something, and must be preserved."

"It may have a Biblical reference to the state of Italy. You remember Issachar was likened to an a.s.s between two burdens. In that case it probably emanated from Rome," I remarked; but n.o.body seemed to see the point of the allusion, and the observation fell flat.

That night I dined with the colonel, and after dinner I persuaded him to let me visit Valeria in prison, as I wished to take the portrait of the wife of the celebrated brigand chief. I thanked my stars that my friend who had seen her when we met in the glen, was away on duty with his detachment, and could not testify to our former acquaintance. My meeting with Valeria on this occasion was too touching and full of tender pa.s.sages to be of any general interest. Valeria told me that she was still a bride; that she had only been married a few months, and that she had been compelled to become Croppo's wife against her choice, as the brigand's will was too powerful to be resisted; but that, though he was jealous and attached to her, he was stern and cruel, and so far from winning her love since her marriage, he had rather estranged it by his fits of pa.s.sion and ferocity. As may be imagined, the portrait, which was really very successful, took some time in execution, the more especially as we had to discuss the possibilities of Valeria's escape.

"We are going to be transferred to-morrow to the prison at Foggia," she said. "If, while we were pa.s.sing through the market-place, a disturbance of some sort could be created, as it is market day, and all the country people know me, and are my friends, a rescue might be attempted. I know how to arrange for that, only they must see some chance of success."

A bright thought suddenly struck me; it was suggested by a trick I had played shortly after my arrival in Italy.

"You know I am something of a magician, Valeria; you have had proof of that. If I create a disturbance by magic to-morrow, when you are pa.s.sing through the market-place, you won't stay to wonder what is the cause of the confusion, but instantly take advantage of it to escape."

"Trust me for that, _caro mio_."

"And if you escape, when shall we meet again?"

"I am known too well now to risk another meeting. I shall be in hiding with Croppo, where it will be impossible for you to find me, nor while he lives could I ever dare to think of leaving him; but I shall never forget you"--and she pressed my hands to her lips--"though I shall no longer have the picture of the donkey to remember you by."

"See, here's my photograph; that will be better," said I, feeling a little annoyed--foolishly, I admit. Then we strained each other to our respective hearts, and parted. Now it so happened that my room in the _locanda_ in which I was lodging overlooked the market-place. Here at ten o'clock in the morning I posted myself--for that was the hour, as I had been careful to ascertain, when the prisoners were to start for Foggia. I opened the window about three inches, and fixed it there: I took out my gun, put eight b.a.l.l.s in it, and looked down upon the square.

It was crowded with the country people in their bright-coloured costumes, chaffering over their produce. I looked above them to the tall campanile of the church which filled one side of the square. I receded a step and adjusted my gun on the ledge of the window to my entire satisfaction. I then looked down the street in which the prison was situated, and which debouched on the square, and awaited events. At ten minutes past ten I saw the soldiers at the door of the prison form up, and then I knew that the twenty prisoners of whom they formed the escort were starting; but the moment they began to move, I fired at the big bell in the campanile, which responded with a loud clang. All the people in the square looked up. As the prisoners entered the square, which they had to cross in its whole breadth, I fired again and again. The bell banged twice, and the people began to buzz about. Now, I thought, I must let the old bell have it. By the time five more b.a.l.l.s had struck the bell with a resounding din, the whole square was in commotion. A miracle was evidently in progress, or the campanile was bewitched. People began to run hither and thither; all the soldiers forming the escort gaped open-mouthed at the steeple as the clangour continued. As soon as the last shot had been fired, I looked down into the square and saw all this, and I saw that the prisoners were attempting to escape, and in more than one instance had succeeded, for the soldiers began to scatter in pursuit, and the country people to form themselves into impeding crowds, as though by accident, but nowhere could I see Valeria. When I was quite sure she had escaped, I went down and joined the crowd. I saw three prisoners captured and brought back; and when I asked the officer in command how many had escaped, he said three--Croppo's wife, the priest, and another.

When I met my cavalry friends at dinner that evening, it was amusing to hear them speculate upon the remarkable occurrence which had, in fact, upset the wits of the whole town. Priests and vergers and sacristans had visited the campanile, and one of them had brought away a flattened piece of lead, which looked as if it might have been a bullet; but the suggestion that eight bullets could have hit the bell in succession without anybody hearing a sound, was treated with ridicule. I believe the bell was subsequently exorcised with holy water. I was afraid to remain with the regiment with my air-gun after this, lest some one should discover it, and unravel the mystery; besides, I felt a sort of traitor to the brave friends who had so generously offered me their hospitality, so I invented urgent private affairs, which demanded my immediate return to Naples, and on the morning of my departure found myself embraced by all the officers of the regiment, from the colonel downwards, who, in the fervour of their kisses, thrust sixteen waxed moustache-points against my cheeks.

About eighteen months after this, I heard of the capture and execution of Croppo, and I knew that Valeria was free; but I had unexpectedly inherited a property, and was engaged to be married. I am now a country gentleman with a large family. My sanctum is stocked with various mementoes of my youthful adventures, but none awakens in me such thrilling memories as are excited by the breviary of the brigand priest, and the portrait of the brigand's bride.

THE SISTERS OF THIBET.

It is now nearly twenty-seven years ago--long before the Theosophical Society was founded, or Esoteric Buddhism was known to exist in the form recently revealed to us by Mr Sinnett{81}--that I became the _chela_, or pupil, of an adept of Buddhist occultism in Khatmandhu. At that time Englishmen, unless attached to the Residency, were not permitted to reside in that picturesque Nepaulese town. Indeed I do not think that they are now; but I had had an opportunity during the Indian Mutiny, when I was attached to the Nepaulese contingent, of forming an intimacy with a "Guru" connected with the force. It was not until our acquaintance had ripened into a warm friendship that I gradually made the discovery that this interesting man held views which differed so widely from the popular conception of Buddhism as I had known it in Ceylon--where I had resided for some years--that my curiosity was roused,--the more especially as he was in the habit of sinking off gradually, even while I was speaking to him, into trance-conditions, which would last sometimes for a week, during which time he would remain without food; and upon more than one occasion I missed even his material body from my side, under circ.u.mstances which appeared to me at the time unaccountable. The Nepaulese troops were not very often engaged with the rebels during the Indian Mutiny; but when they were, the Guru was always to be seen under the hottest fire, and it was generally supposed by the army that his body, so far from being impervious to bullets, was so pervious to them that they could pa.s.s through it without producing any organic disturbance. I was not aware of this fact at first; and it was not until I observed that, while he stood directly in the line of fire, men were killed immediately behind him, that I ceased to accompany him into action, and determined, if possible, to solve a mystery which had begun to stimulate my curiosity to the highest pitch. It is not necessary for me to enter here into the nature of the conversations I had with him on the most important and vital points affecting universal cosmogony and the human race and its destiny. Suffice it to say, that they determined me to sever my connection with the Government of India; to apply privately, through my friend the Guru, to the late Jung Bahadoor for permission to reside in Nepaul; and finally, in the garb of an Oriental, to take up my residence in Khatmandhu, unknown to the British authorities. I should not now venture on this record of my experiences, or enter upon the revelation of a phase hitherto unknown and unsuspected, of that esoteric science which has, until now, been jealously guarded as a precious heritage belonging exclusively to regularly initiated members of mysteriously organised a.s.sociations, had not Mr Sinnett, with the consent of a distinguished member of the Thibetan brotherhood, and, in fact, at his dictation, let, if I may venture to use so profane an expression in connection with such a sacred subject, "the cat out of the bag." Since, however, the _arhats_, or illuminati, of the East, seem to have arrived at the conclusion that the Western mind is at last sufficiently prepared and advanced in spiritual knowledge to be capable of a.s.similating the occult doctrines of Esoteric Buddhism, and have allowed their pupil to burst them upon a thoughtless and frivolous society with the suddenness of a bomb-sh.e.l.l, I feel released from the obligations to secrecy by which I have hitherto felt bound, and will proceed to unfold a few arcana of a far more extraordinary character than any which are to be found even in the pages of the 'Theosophist' or of 'Esoteric Buddhism.'

Owing to certain conditions connected with my _linga sharira_, or "astral body"--which it would be difficult for me to explain to those who are not to some extent initiated--I pa.s.sed through the various degrees of _chela_- ship with remarkable rapidity. When I say that in less than fifteen years of spiritual absorption and profound contemplation of esoteric mysteries I became a _mahatma_, or adept, some idea may be formed by _chelas_ who are now treading that path of severe ordeal, of the rapidity of my progress: indeed, such extraordinary faculty did I manifest, that at one time the Guru, my master, was inclined to think that I was one of those exceptional cases which recur from time to time, where a child-body is selected as the human tenement of a reincarnated adept; and that though belonging by rights to the fourth round, I was actually born into the fifth round of the human race in the planetary chain. "The adept,"

says an occult aphorism, "becomes; he is not made." That was exactly my case. I attribute it princ.i.p.ally to an overweening confidence in myself, and to a blind faith in others. As Mr Sinnett very properly remarks--

"Very much further than people generally imagine, will mere confidence carry the occult neophyte. How many European readers who would be quite incredulous if told of some results which occult _chelas_ in the most incipient stages of their training have to accomplish by sheer force of confidence, hear constantly in church, nevertheless, the familiar Biblical a.s.surances of the power which resides in faith, and let the words pa.s.s by like the wind, leaving no impression!"

It is true that I had some reason for this confidence--which arose from the fact that prior to my initiation into Buddhist mysteries, and before I left England, I had developed, under the spiritual craze which was then prevalent in society, a remarkable faculty of clairvoyance. This gave me the power not merely of diagnosing the physical and moral conditions of my friends and acquaintances, and of prescribing for them when necessary, but of seeing what was happening in other parts of the world; hence my organism was peculiarly favourable for initiation into occult mysteries, and naturally--or rather spiritually--prepared for that method in the regular course of occult training by which adepts impart instruction to their pupils.

"They awaken," as we are most accurately informed by Mr Sinnett, "the dormant sense in the pupil, and through this they imbue his mind with a knowledge that such and such a doctrine is the real truth. The whole scheme of evolution infiltrates into the regular _chela's_ mind, by reason of the fact that he is made to see the process taking place by clairvoyant vision. There are no words used in his instruction at all. And adepts themselves, to whom the facts and processes of nature are as familiar as our five fingers to us, find it difficult to explain in a treatise which they cannot ill.u.s.trate for us, by producing mental pictures in our dormant sixth sense, the complex anatomy of the planetary system."

I have always felt--and my conviction on the subject has led to some painful discussions between myself and some of my _mahatma_ brothers--that the extreme facility with which I was enabled to perceive at a glance "the complex anatomy of the planetary system," and the rapid development of my "dormant sixth sense," was due mainly to the fact that I was nothing more nor less than what spiritualists call a highly sensitive medium. Meantime this premature development of my sixth sense forced me right up through the obstacles which usually impede such an operation in the case of a fourth-round man, into that stage of evolution which awaits the rest of humanity--or rather, so much of humanity as may reach it in the ordinary course of nature--in the latter part of the fifth round. I merely mention this to give confidence to my readers, as I am about to describe a moral cataclysm which subsequently took place in my sixth sense, which would be of no importance in the case of an ordinary _chela_, but which was attended with the highest significance as occurring to a _mahatma_ who had already attained the highest grade in the mystic brotherhood. It was not to be wondered at that when I arrived at this advanced condition, Khatmandhu, though a pleasant town, was not altogether a convenient residence for an occultist of my eminence. In the first place, the streets were infested with _dugpas_, or red-caps, a heretical sect, some members of which have _arhat_ pretensions of a very high order--indeed I am ready to admit that I have met with Shammar adepts, who, so far as supernatural powers were concerned, were second to none among ourselves. But this was only the result of that necromancy which Buddha in his sixth incarnation denounced in the person of Tsong- kha-pa, the great reformer. They even deny the spiritual supremacy of the Dalai Lama at Lha.s.sa, and own allegiance to an impostor who lives at the monastery of Sakia Djong.

The presence of these men, and the presumption of their adepts, who maintained that through subjective or clairvoyant conditions, which they a.s.serted were higher than ours, they had attained a more exalted degree of illumination which revealed a different cosmogony from that which has been handed down to us through countless generations of adepts, were a perpetual annoyance to me; but perhaps not greater than the proximity of the English Resident and the officers attached to him, the impure exhalations from whose _rupas_, or material bodies, infected as they were with magnetic elements drawn from Western civilisation, whenever I met them, used to send me to bed for a week. I therefore strongly felt the necessity of withdrawal to that isolated and guarded region where the most advanced adepts can pursue their contemplative existence without fear of interruption, and prepare their _karma_, or, in other words, the molecules of their fifth principle, for the ineffable bliss of appropriate development in _devachan_--a place, or rather "state,"

somewhat resembling Purgatory with a dash of heaven in it; or even for the still more exquisite sensation which arises from having no sensations at all, and which characterises _nirvana_, or a sublime condition of conscious rest in Omniscience.

That I am not drawing upon my imagination in alluding to this mysterious region, or imposing upon the credulity of my readers, I will support my a.s.sertion by the high authority of Mr Sinnett, or rather of his Guru; and here I may remark incidentally, that after a long experience of Gurus, I have never yet met one who would consciously tell a lie.

"From time immemorial," says Mr Sinnett's Guru, "there has been a certain region in Thibet, which to this day is quite unknown to and unapproachable by any but initiated persons, and inaccessible to the ordinary people of the country, as to any others, in which adepts have always congregated. But the country generally was not in Buddha's time, as it has since become, the chosen habitation of the great brotherhood. Much more than they are at present, were the _mahatmas_ in former times distributed throughout the world.

"The progress of civilisation engendering the magnetism they find so trying, had, however, by the date with which we are now dealing--the fourteenth century--already given rise to a very general movement towards Thibet on the part of the previously dissociated occultists.

Far more widely than was held to be consistent with the safety of mankind was occult knowledge and power then found to be disseminated.

To the task of putting it under a rigid system of rule and law did Tsong-kha-pa address himself."

Of course, before transferring my material body to this region, I was perfectly familiar with it by reason of the faculty which, as Mr Sinnett very truly tells us, is common to all adepts, of being able to flit about the world at will in your astral body; and here I would remark parenthetically, that I shall use the term "astral body" to save confusion, though, as Mr Sinnett again properly says, it is not strictly accurate under the circ.u.mstances. In order to make this clear, I will quote his very lucid observations on the subject:--

"During the last year or two, while hints and sc.r.a.ps of occult science have been finding their way out into the world, the expression 'astral body' has been applied to a certain semblance of the human form, fully inhabited by its higher principles, which can migrate to any distance from the physical body--projected consciously and with exact intention by a living adept, or unintentionally by the accidental application of certain mental forces to his loosened principles by any person at the moment of death. For ordinary purposes, there is no practical inconvenience in using the expression 'astral body' for the appearance so projected--indeed any more strictly accurate expression, as will be seen directly, would be c.u.mbersome, and we must go on using the phrase in both meanings. No confusion need arise; but strictly speaking, the _linga sharira_, or third principle, is the astral body, and that cannot be sent about as the vehicle of the higher principles."

As, however, "no confusion need arise" from my describing how I went about in my _linga sharira_, I will continue to use it as the term for my vehicle of transportation. Nor need there be any difficulty about my being in two places at once. I have the authority of Mr Sinnett's Guru for this statement, and it is fully confirmed by my own experience. For what says the Guru?--"The individual consciousness, it is argued, cannot be in two places at once. But first of all, to a certain extent it can."

It is unnecessary for me to add a word to this positive and most correct statement; but what the Guru has not told us is, that there is a certain discomfort attending the process. Whenever I went with my astral body, or _linga sharira_, into the mysterious region of Thibet already alluded to, leaving my _rupa_, or natural body, in Khatmandhu, I was always conscious of a feeling of rawness; while the necessity of looking after my _rupa_--of keeping, so to speak, my astral eye upon it, lest some accident should befall it, which might prevent my getting back to it, and so prematurely terminate my physical or objective existence--was a constant source of anxiety to me. Some idea of the danger which attends this process may be gathered from the risks incidental to a much more difficult operation which I once attempted, and succeeded, after incredible effort, in accomplishing; this was the pa.s.sage of my fifth principle, or ego-spirit, into the ineffable condition of _nirvana_.

"Let it not be supposed," says Mr Sinnett,--for it is not his Guru who is now speaking,--"that for any adept such a pa.s.sage can be lightly undertaken. Only stray hints about the nature of this great mystery have reached me; but, putting these together, I believe I am right in saying that the achievement in question is one which only some of the high initiates are qualified to attempt, which exacts a total suspension of animation in the body for periods of time compared to which the longest cataleptic trances known to ordinary science are insignificant; the protection of the physical frame from natural decay during this period by means which the resources of occult science are strained to accomplish; and withal it is a process involving a double risk to the continued earthly life of the person who undertakes it.

One of these risks is the doubt whether, when once _nirvana_ is attained, the ego will be willing to return. That the return will be a terrible effort and sacrifice is certain, and will only be prompted by the most devoted attachment, on the part of the spiritual traveller, to the idea of duty in its purest abstraction. The second great risk is that of allowing the sense of duty to predominate over the temptation to stay--a temptation, be it remembered, that is not weakened by the motive that any conceivable penalty can attach to it.

Even then it is always doubtful whether the traveller will be able to return."

All this is exactly as Mr Sinnett has described it. I shall never forget the struggle that I had with my ego when, ignoring "the idea of duty in its purest abstraction," it refused to abandon the bliss of _nirvana_ for the troubles of this mundane life; or the anxiety both of my _manas_, or human soul, and my _buddhi_, or spiritual soul, lest, after by our combined efforts we had overcome our ego, we should not be able to do our duty by our _rupa_, or natural body, and get back into it.

Of course, my migrations to the _mahatma_ region of Thibet were accompanied by no such difficulty as this--as, to go with your _linga sharira_, or astral body, to another country, is a very different and much more simple process than it is to go with your _manas_, or human soul, into _nirvana_. Still it was a decided relief to find myself comfortably installed with my material body, or _rupa_, in the house of a Thibetan brother on that sacred soil which has for so many centuries remained unpolluted by a profane foot.

Here I pa.s.sed a tranquil and contemplative existence for some years, broken only by such incidents as my pa.s.sage into _nirvana_, and disturbed only by a certain subjective sensation of aching or void, by which I was occasionally attacked, and which I was finally compelled to attribute, much to my mortification, to the absence of women. In the whole of this sacred region, the name of which I am compelled to withhold, there was not a single female. Everybody in it was given up to contemplation and ascetic absorption; and it is well known that profound contemplation, for any length of time, and the presence of the fair s.e.x, are incompatible. I was much troubled by this vacuous sensation, which I felt to be in the highest degree derogatory to my fifth principle, and the secret of which I discovered, during a trance-condition which lasted for several months, to arise from a subtle magnetism, to which, owing to my peculiar organic condition, I was especially sensitive, and which penetrated the _mahatma_ region from a tract of country almost immediately contiguous to it in the Karakorum Mountains, which was as jealously guarded from foreign intrusion as our own, and which was occupied by the "Thibetan Sisters," a body of female occultists of whom the Brothers never spoke except in terms of loathing and contempt. It is not, therefore, to be wondered at that no mention is made either of them, or the lovely highland district they occupy, in Mr Sinnett's book. The attraction of this feminine sphere became at last so overpowering, that I determined to visit it in my astral body; and now occurred the first of many most remarkable experiences which were to follow. It is well known to the initiated, though difficult to explain to those who are not, that in a sense s.p.a.ce ceases to exist for the astral body. When you get out of your _rupa_, you are out of s.p.a.ce as ordinary persons understand it, though it continues to have a certain subjective existence.

I was in this condition, and travelling rapidly in the desired direction, when I became conscious of the presence of the most exquisitely lovely female astral body which the imagination of man could conceive; and here I may incidentally remark, that no conception can be formed of the beauty to which woman can attain by those who have only seen her in her _rupa_--or, in other words, in the flesh. Woman's real charm consists in her _linga sharira_--that ethereal duplicate of the physical body which guides _jiva_, or the second principle, in its work on the physical particles, and causes it to build up the shape which these a.s.sume in the material. Sometimes it makes rather a failure of it, so far as the _rupa_ is concerned, but it always retains its own fascinating contour and deliciously diaphanous composition undisturbed. When my gaze fell upon this most enchanting object, or rather subject--for I was in a subjective condition at the time--I felt all the senses appertaining to my third principle thrill with emotion; but it seemed impossible--which will readily be understood by the initiated--to convey to her any clear idea of the admiration she excited, from the fact that we were neither of us in natural s.p.a.ce. Still the sympathy between our _linga shariras_ was so intense, that I perceived that I had only to go back for my _rupa_, and travel in it to the region of the sisterhood, to recognise her in her _rupa_ at once.

Every _chela_ even knows how impossible it is to make love satisfactorily in nothing but your _linga sharira_. It is quite different after you are dead, and have gone in your fourth principle, or _kama rupa_, which is often translated "body of desire," into _devachan_; for, as Mr Sinnett most correctly remarks, "The purely sensual feelings and tastes of the late personality will drop off from it in _devachan_; but it does not follow that nothing is preservable in that state, except feelings and thoughts having a direct reference to religion or spiritual philosophy.

On the contrary, all the superior phases, even of sensuous emotion, find their appropriate sphere of development in _devachan_." Until you are obliged to go to _devachan_--which, in ordinary parlance, is the place good men go to when they die--my advice is, stick to your _rupa_; and indeed it is the instinct of everybody who is not a _mahatma_ to do this.

I admit--though in making this confession I am aware that I shall incur the contempt of all _mahatmas_--that on this occasion I found my _rupa_ a distinct convenience, and was not sorry that it was still in existence.

In it I crossed the neutral zone still inhabited by ordinary Thibetans, and after a few days' travel, found myself on the frontiers of "the Sisters'" territory. The question which now presented itself was how to get in. To my surprise, I found the entrances guarded not by women, as I expected, but by men. These were for the most part young and handsome.

"So you imagined," said one, who advanced to meet me with an engaging air, "that you could slip into our territory in your astral body; but you found that all the entrances _in vacuo_"--I use this word for convenience--"are as well guarded as those in s.p.a.ce. See, here is the Sister past whom you attempted to force your way: we look after the physical frontier, and leave the astral or spiritual to the ladies,"--saying which he politely drew back, and the apparition whose astral form I knew so well, now approached in her substantial _rupa_--in fact, she was a good deal stouter than I expected to find her; but I was agreeably surprised by her complexion, which was much fairer than is usual among Thibetans--indeed her whole type of countenance was Caucasian, which was not to be wondered at, considering, as I afterwards discovered, that she was by birth a Georgian. She greeted me, in the language common to all Thibetan occultists, as an old acquaintance, and one whose arrival was evidently expected--indeed she pointed laughingly to a bevy of damsels whom I now saw trooping towards us, some carrying garlands, some playing upon musical instruments, some dancing in lively measures, and singing their songs of welcome as they drew near. Then Ushas--for that was the name (signifying "The Dawn") of the illuminata whose acquaintance I had first made _in vacuo_--taking me by the hand, led me to them, and said--

"Rejoice, O my sisters, at the long-antic.i.p.ated arrival of the Western _arhat_, who, in spite of the eminence which he has attained in the mysteries of Esoteric Buddhism, and his intimate connection during so many years with the Thibetan fraternity, has yet retained enough of his original organic conditions to render him, even in the isolation of (here she mentioned the region I had come from) susceptible to the higher influence of the occult sisterhood. Receive him in your midst as the _chela_ of a new avatar which will be unfolded to him under your tender guidance. Take him in your arms, O my sisters, and comfort him with the doctrines of Ila, the Divine, the Beautiful."

Taking me in their arms, I now found, was a mere formula or figure of speech, and consisted only in throwing garlands over me. Still I was much comforted, not merely by the grace and cordiality of their welcome, but by the mention of Ila, whose name will doubtless be familiar to my readers as occurring in a Sanscrit poem of the age immediately following the Vedic period, called the Satapathabrahmana, when Manu was saved from the flood, and offered the sacrifice "to be the model of future generations." By this sacrifice he obtained a daughter named Ila, who became supernaturally the mother of humanity, and who, I had always felt, has been treated with too little consideration by the _mahatmas_--indeed her name is not so much as even mentioned in Mr Sinnett's book. Of course it was rather a shock to my spiritual pride, that I, a _mahatma_ of eminence myself, should be told that I was to be adopted as a mere _chela_ by these ladies; but I remembered those beautiful lines of Buddha's--I quote from memory--and I hesitated no longer:--

"To be long-suffering and meek, To a.s.sociate with the tranquil, Religious talk at due seasons; This is the greatest blessing."

"To be long-suffering"--this was a virtue I should probably have a splendid opportunity of displaying under the circ.u.mstances,--"and meek"; what greater proof of meekness could I give than by becoming the _chela_ of women? "To a.s.sociate with the tranquil." I should certainly obey this precept, and select the most tranquil as my a.s.sociates, and with them look forward to enjoying "religious talk at due seasons." Thus fortified by the precepts of the greatest of all teachers, my mind was at once made up, and, lifting up my voice, I chanted, in the language of the occult, some beautiful stanzas announcing my acceptance of their invitation, which evidently thrilled my hearers with delight. In order to save unnecessary fatigue, we now transferred ourselves through s.p.a.ce, and, in the twinkling of an eye, I found myself in the enchanting abode which they called their home, or _dama_. Here a group of young male _chelas_ were in waiting to attend to our wants; and the remarkable fact now struck me, that not only were all the women lovely and the men handsome, but that no trace of age was visible on any of them. Ushas smiled as she saw what was pa.s.sing in my mind, and said, without using any spoken words, for language had already become unnecessary between us, "This is one of the mysteries which will be explained to you when you have reposed after the fatigues of your journey; in the meantime Asvin,"--and she pointed out a _chela_ whose name signified "Twilight,"--"will show you to your room." I would gladly linger, did my s.p.a.ce allow, over the delights of this enchanting region, and the marvellously complete and well-organised system which prevailed in its curiously composed society. Suffice it to say, that in the fairy-like pavilion which was my home, dwelt twenty-four lovely Sisters and their twenty-three _chelas_--I was to make the twenty-fourth--in the most complete and absolute harmony, and that their lives presented the most charming combination of active industry, harmless gaiety, and innocent pleasures. By a proper distribution of work and proportionment of labour, in which all took part, the cultivation of the land, the tending of the exquisite gardens, with their plashing fountains, fragrant flowers, and inviting arbours, the herding of the cattle, and the heavier part of various handicrafts, fell upon the men; while the women looked after the domestic arrangements--cooked, made or mended and washed the _chelas_' clothes and their own (both men and women were dressed according to the purest principles of aesthetic taste), looked after the dairy, and helped the men in the lighter parts of their industries.

Various inventions, known only to the occult sisterhood by means of their studies in the esoteric science of mechanics, contributed to shorten these labours to an extent which would be scarcely credited by the uninitiated; but some idea of their nature may be formed from the fact that methods of storing and applying electricity, unknown as yet in the West, have here been in operation for many centuries, while telephones, flying-machines, and many other contrivances still in their infancy with us, are carried to a high pitch of perfection. In a word, what struck me at once as the fundamental difference between this sisterhood and the fraternity of adepts with which I had been a.s.sociated, was that the former turned all their occult experiences to practical account in their daily life in this world, instead of reserving them solely for the subjective conditions which are supposed by _mahatmas_ to attach exclusively to another state of existence.

Owing to these appliances the heavy work of the day was got through usually in time for a late breakfast, the plates and dishes being washed up and the knives cleaned by a mechanical process scarcely occupying two minutes; and the afternoon was usually devoted to the instruction of _chelas_ in esoteric branches of learning, and their practical application to mundane affairs, until the cool of the evening, when parties would be made up either for playing out-of-door games, in the less violent of which the women took part, or in riding the beautiful horses of the country, or in flying swiftly over its richly cultivated and variegated surface, paying visits to other _damas_ or homes, each of which was occupied on the same scale and in the same manner as our own.