The Equinox (Volume I, Number II)

THE PSYCHOLOGY OF HASHISH So then he must abandon the whole series of ecstasies ; all this time he has been on the wrong road. For the Three Characteristics are true of Vififianam as they are of Rupa; Change, Sorrow, Unsubstantiality. He has only one asset; the habit of One-pointedness— Ekagrata. He may be all kinds of a black magician ; but at least he has learnt to concentrate his mind. But what is he to aim at? Hashish-analogy is better than ever here; for Nibbana stands to the attainment of the Eight Jhanas, the Four Formless States «.7.A. as the Decalogue does to any of his hashish-states. It has nothing whatever to do with it. All this time he has been walking round the circumference of a wheel, cheerfully singing “Nearer, my God, to Thee; Nearer to Thee!” while his God is in the centre. He has done the medicine-man trick, and wasted a lot of maidens in the hope of making rain. So—one must suppose, for here I reach a point where, as Mr. Waite jeers, we are driven to take refuge in portentous darkness and irretrievable mystery (because we don’t know anything about it)—he sits down and contemplates the Three Characteristics. This will presumably be very difficult to do because he is probably (for all the “ Grace of the Lord Shiva” business) an expert in the Vififianam trances, and having thus created an eternal Universe and an even more eternal Absence of Universe, both of which, too, are probably mere masses of Sat—Chit—Ananda (Being—Knowledge—Bliss) while he is trying to think of Change—Sorrow—Unsubstantiality. At last, as I imagine, probably without foundation, he succeeds in seeing first the truth and then the falsity of the Three Characteristics—and that is Nibbana. 85