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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.