Collected Works (Vol. II)

TIME 275 dreams !””—and a damned good way to look at death, by heaven ! Myst. Yes! But I meant that some dreams are more vivid than some waking states, even adult states hours long. You remember the ‘‘ Flying dream,” though I daresay you have not experienced it since childhood : it is part of your identity, ashape or defining idea of your mind: but you have forgotten the picnic at—-where you will. Scept. There is something to be thankful for in that. Then, there are incidents of sport Alyst. Mysteries of initiation —— Scept. Narrow escapes Myst. The presence of death —— Scept. Shocks-—— Myst. Some incidents of earliest child- hood Scept. Memories which can be classed, and therefore fall under great headings; in- tellectual victories—-- Myst. Religious emotions Scepi. Ah! this minute too, for I group them! All these are intuitions which come near, which touch, which threaten, which alarm, the Ego itself! Myst. Yet in those great ecstasies of love, poetry, and their like; the Ego is altogether abased, absorbed in the belovéd: the pheno- menon is utterly objective. Scept. ‘To be abased is to be exalted. But we are again at metaphysics. The Ego and the Non-Ego are convertible terms. We are agreed that one of the two is a myth; but we might argue for months and aeons as to which of the two it is. Myst. Here Hindu practice bears out Western speculation, whether we take the shadowy idealism of Berkeley, or the self- refuted! Monism of Haeckel. All these men got our results, and interpreted them in the partial light of their varied intellect, their diverse surrounding and education. But the result is the same physiological pheno- 1 Haeckel, postulating a unity, is compelled to ascribe to it a tendency to dividuality, thus stultifying his postulate. See the ‘‘ Riddle of the Universe.” menon, from Plato and Christ to Spinoza and Cankaracharya,! from Augustine and Abelard, Boehme and Weigel in their Christian com- munities to Trismegistus and _ Porphyry, Mohammed and Paracelsus in their mystic palaces of Wisdom, the doctrine is essentially one: and its essence is that existence is one. But to my experience it is certain that in Dhyana the I‘go is rejected. Scept. Before inquiring further of you: What is this Dhyana? let me say, in view of what you have just urged: How do you know that the Ego is rejected? Myst. Peccavi. My leanings are Bud- dhistic, I will confess: indeed, the great majority of Eastern philosophers, arguing 2 priort from the indestructibility of the Ego— a dogma, say I, and no more !—have asserted that in the Dhyanic state the Object is lost in the Ego rather than vce versd, and they support this conclusion by the fact of the glorification of the object. Scept. But this is all @ priorz. For be it supposed that Dhyana is merely a state of more correct perception of the nature of the object than that afforded by normal inspection —and this is a reasonable view !—the argu- ment simply goes to prove that matter, as the Ego, is divine. And this is our old vicious circle ! Myst. Also, since the object may be the Infinite. All Dhyana proves is that ‘‘ things are not what they seem.” Scept. Not content with our poets, you seem to have wandered into Longfellow. Myst. Also Tennyson. , Scept. I can sympathise: there is a blot on my own scutcheon. You are just, though, in your statement that the glorification of one of two factors Myst, At the moment of the disappearance of their dividuality Scept. So? Myst. Surely. They also themselves dis- appear, just as carbon, the black solid, and 1 Hindu reformer (about 1000 A.D.), who raised the cult of Shiva from that of a local phallic deity to that of an universal God. The Tamil Isaiah.