The Equinox (Volume I, Number IV)

THE TEMPLE OF SOLOMON THE KING he now had succeeded in building the great temple of Self- Control. Working upon Eastern lines he had laid stone upon stone, and yet when the work was completed, magnificent though it was, there was no God yet found to indwell it. It was indeed but an empty house. Though we have now arrived at this turning point, it will be necessary before we review the contents of this chapter to narrate the events from the present date—March 1902, down to the 11th of August 1903; when, by the chance (destined) meeting with Ouarda the Seer, he was eventually enabled to set in motion the great power he had gained, and by wrestling with the deity, as Jacob wrestled with the Angel by the ford of Jabbok, see God face to face and Live. For a space of nearly six months P. and D. A. journeyed amongst the vast mountains beyond Cashmir, and though during this period no record of his meditations has been pre- served, time was not idled away and exercises in meditation of a more exalted kind, on the vastness of Nature and the ungraspable might of God, were his daily joy and consolation. In September he returned to Srinnagar, and thence jour- neyed to Bombay where he remained for but a few days before his return journey to Europe. Arriving in Egypt he remained in that ancient land for some three weeks, somehow feeling that it was here that he should find what he had so long now been seeking for in vain. But realizing the hopelessness of waiting in any definite country or city, without some clue to guide him to his goal, he left Egypt at the beginning of November and continued his journey back to England only to break it again at Paris. In this city he remained until April the following year 173