The Equinox (Volume I, Number II)

THE PSYCHOLOGY OF HASHISH of Pan, the Four Formless States of Buddhism, namely, Samadhi upon Consciousness, Space, Nothing, and that which is neither P nor p’, in logical phraseology. Here, too, we should place Shivadarshana, the Vision of the Destruction of the Universe, the Opening of the Eye of Shiva. (Which is why adepts of this stage wear an eye as a badge.) Of this vision what can one say, save that the Universe, as previously known through Atmadarshana, is annihilated? Yet the negation of this phrase is only apparent ; the sense is that all that negative Atmadarshana is destroyed ; it is only an illusion that goes. Yet there is indeed Nothing in its place—and the only way to express the matter is to spell that Nothing with a capital N. If the rationalist reader has had the quite super-Stylite patience to read to this point, he will surely now at last throw down the book with an ethically justifiable curse. Yet I beg him to believe that there is a shade of difference between me and a paradox-monger. I am not playing with words—Lord knows how I wish I could! I find that they play with me!—I am honestly and soberly trying to set down that which I know, that which I know better than I know anything else in the world, that which so transcends and excels all other experience that I am all on fire to proclaim it. Yet I fail utterly. I have given my life to the study of the English language; I am supposed by my flatterers to have some little facility of expression, especially, one may agree, in conveying the extremes of thought of all kinds. II F 81