The Equinox (Volume I, Number VII)

THE EQUINOX he found his old comrade, I. A., now a member of the Buddhist Sangha, under the name οί Bhikku Ananda Metteya. It was from him that he received the instructions which were to help him to reach the great and terrible pinnacle of the mind whence the Adept must plunge into the Abyss, to emerge naked, a babe—the Babe of the Abyss “Explore the River of the Soul," said Ananda Metteya, “ whence and in what order you have come” For three days—the longest period allowed by the Buddhist law—he remained in the Choung, meditating on this matter; but nothing seems to have come of it. He set his teeth and settled down doggedly to this consideration of the eternal why. Here is a being in Rangoon Why? Because he wanted to see Bhikku A. Μ. Why? Because . . . and so on to the half-forgotten past, dark seas that phosphoresced as the clean keel of his thought divided them. But, as appears, he was even more absorbed in the question of the consecution of impressions. Is there any connection between any two things? We hear that he left Rangoon for Bhamo by the Irrawaddy steamer jam on the 15th. We can almost see him—lean, brown, stern and immobile, watching the wavelets of the great river, and the flying-fish, and the one thought: Why? He shut off his reflective faculties, for he saw that there was nothing to reason about. Phenomena were consecutive, but not causally connected.1 On the 18th he writes: ”About now I may count my ' This should be studied with chapter VII of TIM Star in the West, and Hume’s “ Essay on the Human Understanding,” which he again read on the 17th. 10