The Equinox (Volume I, Number IV)

THE EQUINOX “Ha,” he replied, “he no good, he my disciple, I am the master!” “And Swami Dayanand Sarasvati?” I continued. The same answer was vouched to me, although this latter teacher had died at the age of seventy, forty years ago. Thinking it about time to change the conversation, I said: “O Thou Shower from the Highest! Tell thy grovelling disciple what then zs a ‘lie’?” “Ha!” he replied, “it is illusion, this truth that has been diverged from its real point . . . an illusive spring in the primo-genial fermentation of ‘fee-no-me-non,’ in this typo- cosmy apparent to the senses which you call ‘de Vurld’!!!” With this, and promises of oceans of blissful reality from the highest eternality of ultimate ecstasy, he bade me sit in a chair and blow alternately through my nostrils; and, if I had faith, so he assured me, I should in six months’ time arrive at the supreme stage of the Highest in the infinite Ultimatum, and should burst as a chance illusively fermented bubble in the purest atmosphere of the highest reality. The next occasion on which I saw the Mahatma was at a business meeting of his disciples held at 60, South Audley Street. His Holiness called them tiger-cubs, nevertheless seldom have I seen sucha pen full of sheep. A man from Ilfracombe proposed this, and a man from Liverpool seconded that; at last a London plumber arose, and with great solemnity declared: ‘‘Gintlemen, hi taik hit ’is ’oliness his really ’oly, hin fact gintlemen hi taik hit ’e his Gawd; . . . hand so hi proposes the very least we can do for ’im his to subscribe yearly towards ’im foive shillins!” (ear, ear” from a comrade in the corner). However, the sheep wouldn’t have it, and the 286