The Star in the West

THE NEW WINE 305 Whilst others not attaining , attempt a short cut by the means of such drugs as opium and hasheesh , the latter of which is most powerful in producing a state of pseudo -Samadhi . To make me as one dead : To loose the girders of the soul , and gain Breathing and life for the Intelligible ; Find death , yet find it living.'1 In the midst of my complicated hallucination , I could perceive I had a dual existence . One portion of me was whirled unresistingly along the track of this tremendous experience , and the other sat looking down from a height upon its double , observing reassuring , and serenely weigh ing all the phenomena .? 3 Probably Samadhi itself acts somewhat like this . But hasheesh produces at times under certain con ditions severe suffering , and the yogi does not undergo such , for he leaves it in his wake . Hasheesh may in some way be the loosener of the girders of the soul , but this is all . Huxley says : “ The influence of diet on dreams ; of stimulants upon the fulness and the velocity of the stream of thought ; the delirious phantoms gene rated by disease , by hashish , or by alcohol ; will occur to everyone as examples of the marvellous sensitive ness of the apparatus of ideation to purely physical influences .” 4 Not by the pipings of a bird In skies of blue on fields of gold , 1 Tannhäuser , vol . i, p . 256 . 2 The Hasheesh Eater , pp . 23-86 . 3 The girders of the soul which give her breathing are easy to be loosed .-- CHALDEAN ORACLES , Psell . 32 , Pleth . 8. Huxley's Hume , p . 106 . X 4