Distressed at my own perplexity, I studied the luxuriant pile of his carpet as I answered, "I do not doubt the sincerity of your devotion, but, well, in the first place I suspect that some of us are apt to sacrifice too readily the immediate and concrete personal obligation to some more doubtful and less urgent, though loftier claim; whether patriotic, social, cultural or whatnot. But let that pass. Clearly there are occasions when the beloved must be sacrificed. And I am certainly in no position to judge you. But--" I was at a loss to explain myself. The mystic settled once more in his chair, supporting his chin in his hand, and gazing fixedly at me. Our eyes met once more, and neither flinched. At last I said, "I am daunted by your assurance, by your certainty that your new self-dedication to the spirit is not, after all, self-regarding, and the subtlest snare of all."

  Gravely he said, "I know well that spiritual pride is of all sins the most elusive, and the most difficult to eradicate. It is like couch grass interlaced among a rose tree's roots. But there come occasions when we must simply have the courage of our convictions, and face the consequences. Let me put it this way. Only the divine psychologist can know whether in the last analysis my act was true or false. But for me, the situation was in all simplicity this: I heard a call, and I responded. Now if, after all, that call was illusory and my act false, what is the upshot? At the worst, one individual spirit (namely myself) is damned; or rather one very incomplete individualisation of the eternal reality is gravely retarded in its age-long search for salvation, or more precisely in the task of self-transcendence and reawakening as the universal spirit; and another individual, namely my wife, is hurt for a few brief months or years. But what are years when we are concerned with eternity? And may she not use this moment of suffering for speedier self-transcendence? On the other hand, if the call was indeed what it seemed, the true and urgent call of the spirit, of reality demanding unconditional service and single-hearted devotion, then my renunciation was right. And I am convinced that this is the case. The spirit calls me, and I must relentlessly obey."

  I murmured that I admired his confidence even while I doubted its justification. He answered with startling emphasis, "Good God, man! It's not a case of confidence but stark perception." Then more calmly, "Through fasting and sexual abstinence and mortification, I tell you I saw the truth which alone gives meaning to our confused consciousness. And so I could not but do as I have done. The truth took hold of me. The spirit dictated to me." "What did you see?" I demanded, not without roughness.

  He answered promptly, "Fool, how can I tell you what I saw? How can I describe sight to the born-blind?" Then gravely he said, "I saw all time comprised within eternity, all individuals comprised within the eternal individuality, all loves as modes of the eternal spirit, all wisdoms as themes within the ineffable wisdom." Quickly I pounced on him. "Honestly, now, did you really, really see all that?" The mystic was silent, and I waited, while the city's clocks struck the hour. Then slowly a smile of equal brotherhood reconquered his face as he said quietly, "No, I did not really see all that. But honestly, honestly, I did begin to see. I saw enough to know that such all-redeeming truth can be seen. Someday I shall see more."

  For a moment his eyes were raised to the little Buddha, then lowered to his folded hands. The three of us remained silent. Outside, the sad murmur of the city was punctuated by the occasional horns of cars; but within the room silence was a presence. And silence paralysed my tongue. But my mind still stirred; for I noted that the mystic's expression mimicked the temper of the stone features very faithfully. Was this similarity, I wondered, conscious; or was it the unconscious and spontaneous manifestation of an inner spiritual likeness?

  I found courage to speak. "The difference between us," I said, "is perhaps simply that your vision is clearer, and so you are more confident of the spirit's demands on you. But there is one question that I feel bound to ask. As I see it, the life of the spirit is essentially the life of love, of concrete active love of individual persons, and so of active goodwill toward all men. Therefore, what is demanded of us is effective service of the whole terrestrial company of persons. The spirit, as I see it, is not for the isolated individual but for individuals unified in fellowship. Now I can see that we must sometimes sacrifice the immediate concrete personal love to some kind of larger social service. But to sacrifice it to the pure life of the spirit--what does that really mean?"

  Once more, silence. Presently the mystic spoke again, in a voice that was colourless. I wondered whether this was because he was so held by his vision of high truth that he had little attention to spare for me; or whether his mind was empty as a child's repeating a difficult and imperfectly remembered lesson. "The life of the spirit," he said, "is different for different levels of lucidity. For ordinary uregenerate persons it is simply the way of personal love and honest social service. But on the highest level, the life of the spirit is not action but pure contemplation. Those who are not reborn live in the error that the world of sense perception and action, and of individual persons, is real. They so wallow in the sensuous and the sensual life that it engulfs them. They are as obtuse to the higher ranges of the spirit as an ape to mathematics. Now, I do not contend that the world of the senses is evil in itself. Nothing is evil in itself. But to the spirit in each of us, striving to waken and be the eternal spirit, the world of sensation is a diabolically enticing snare, an exquisitely sweet poison. And the world of persons is equally an illusion and a snare. But through mortification and 'self-naughting' one may reach a state in which not only the whole furniture of earth but also the whole seductive choir of sentient individuals are felt to be a mere clinging mud, holding the spirit down from soaring into its true element. Soon, if one perseveres, the temporal and sensuous veil, with all its bright hard sequins of human individuality, begins to wear thin; and the sequins turn out to be no more than ephemeral sparkles in the universal tissue. At last the phenomenal world becomes little more than a mildly distracting irrelevance; save in so far as it is an imperfectly transparent lens, through which reality is to be seen."

  Against this view my heart protested, and my reason reached for its trusty weapon of sceptical argument. "But, but--" I said. "Our perceived fellow mortals, to whom you admit we owe a duty of love and service, must surely be more than phantoms. How can we owe duty to a phantom? And anyhow, what adequate reason have you to be so sure that your seeming vision of ultimate reality is not itself a mere figment of your own mind, and far more illusory even than the sensed world? I recognize that in attempting to describe your vision to me you are bound to falsify it, since human speech is utterly incapable of signifying what lies wholly beyond the range of normal experience. And because you can never describe it to me, I can never appreciate what it is that you are describing. But there is another, more serious, difficulty, which, I think, you yourself have to face. You obviously cannot even think about your vision save by means of human concepts and therefore human language. Well then, can you be at all sure that your interpretation of your wonderful vision is not utterly false and sheer illusion; far more false than the sensed world and the world of concrete persons?"

  He looked at me searchingly before he replied, "The vision itself can no more be illusion than uninterpreted warmth or colour or mathematical necessity can be illusion. The interpretation too, though it may be profoundly inadequate, cannot be false in essentials. The reality of all else must be judged solely by the touchstone of the vision. As for concrete persons, they are of course not wholly unreal. They are illusory only if they are taken to be what they seem, self-complete realities. They are in fact manifestations of the spirit. For that reason, and for no other, we owe them duty. We, who are ourselves illusory individuals, are yet real manifestations of spirit; and as such we are under obligation to those other manifestations over against us in the illusory world of time and physical phenomena. Our separateness is illusory. And this is how it comes that spirit is not for the isolated individual but for individuals together in community." I would have spoken, but he continued, "And as to your sceptical doubt of the hidden reality, I can only repeat that if you had indeed seen, as I have seen, you could not doubt." Again I would have interrupted, but he overbore me with the flow of his own speech. "In the light of the vision it is patently clear why persons matter, and love and all community matter. Persons matter not in their own right but because they are manifestations, very imperfect manifestations, of the universal spirit. And love matters not because it is of service to individual persons, nor yet because it has survival value for society, but because in love spirit. transcends the illusion of separateness, and reaches out to itself in the other. But see! The purest life of the spirit is not in active personal love, though this is indeed the window through which the spirit first appears. The purest life is in contemplation; in contemplation and responsive worship of the spirit itself; culminating in complete self-transcendence. Then comes the eternal moment, the dying of the trivial person, and the waking into the all-embracing eternity of the spirit. It is evident, is it not, that in this supreme experience love itself is transcended. Love is good because in its imperfect way it is a transcendence of individuality in communion with another individual. The Christian 'love of God' is good because it is an obscure yearning for union with the universal spirit. But in the final experience, in the completed transcendence of individuality in the universal spirit, love itself is left far behind; outgrown, in the perfect self-contemplation of the universal spirit."

  Ending, he raised his eyes again to mine. Such was their peace that I felt myself to be in the presence of one who had been in the Presence. Yet something in me that I dare not, must not, flout protested insistently against his jargon. Seeing me still in doubt, he smiled, "It is difficult," he said, "to grasp this truth. Well I know how difficult it is for those who are still enthralled by personal love, and dare not outgrow their dearest treasure for the sake of the supreme experience. But the sacrifice is demanded."

  *****

  How I longed, and how vainly, to know whether this professed mystic was indeed speaking from some all-clarifying experience withheld from me, or whether he had merely bemused himself with too much uncritical reading. How I longed to know whether, in loving you, my best loved of all, I love simply a unique particular being, or (unwittingly) the universal spirit uniquely manifested in you! But indeed, I love you both ways, both for your individual self and as a symbol of the very spirit.

  I answered him, "I can see, or at least doubtfully glimpse, truth in your contention. But tell me! (For you have not really answered my question.) If, as you admit, spirit is not for the isolated individual but for individuals in community, is it not essentially for lovers, and in the last resort only for the love-knit community of mankind? And if so, must not the life of the spirit necessarily issue in some sort of social service? If it rejects social service, must it not necessarily be false to itself? Surely, if the individual withdraws from the struggle for a good society in order to seek private salvation in the spirit, he is guilty of treason to the venture of creating a truly spiritual order here on earth. He is no better than a soldier who, at the height of the battle, when every hand is desperately needed, slips away to a quiet place, to enjoy reading the classics of mysticism."

  "You are clinging," he said, "to a half-truth. If society is suffering from a mortal sickness, and the cause of the disease is sheer spiritual obtuseness, if society is already tearing itself to pieces in maniacal pursuit of false ends, then clearly the only important social service is for the few elect (who see what is wrong) to segregate themselves for spiritual purification and increase of insight. Later, when the time is ripe, and men are at last sufficiently nauseated by the effects of their own madness, these few elect, or their successors, may return once more to the sick society to become radiating centres of lucidity, and to lead mankind once more toward the light. Or, if it becomes clear to them that the sickness is incurable, then their whole task lies with themselves, namely to advance as far in the spirit as is possible to them."

  From some neighbouring room in the building came the sound of a girl's laughter. It seemed a sudden, teasing splash of water, with the sun in every drop.

  "And which," I asked, "is the case of our world today? Is there hope or are we doomed?"

  He answered, "I do not know. The disease is grave. One thing I do know; the time is past for palliatives. Politics and social reconstruction do not go to the root of the matter. The only hope, and it is a forlorn hope, is spiritual regeneration through the work of a dedicated few. And by now the whole atmosphere of our world is so poisoned that the few must first withdraw themselves for purification. So long as they remain members of a corrupt society, they themselves will remain subtly corrupt. When at last they return, purged and fortified, they may be able to save mankind from its own folly. But I doubt it. Human society as it exists today looks doomed, looks damned. Moreover, quite soon a few whiffs of atomic power will probably end man's history. Today, social reconstruction is a repairing of the cabin furniture while the ship is already breaking up on the rocks. On all counts, ours is a time not for works but for faith and prayer."

  Did I or did I not catch a faint but unpleasant odour of self-complacency in all this talk? I said, "It is certainly fashionable to say that our present society is damned. And yet I wonder. I have come across so many people who have been shocked by the horrors of our time into a kind of bewildered spiritual shame, a sense that their own lives and other people's have been wrongly orientated. Perhaps, sick as our world is, it is just at the point of turning the corner to recovery."

  My host surprised me with a laugh. "When people are badly scared," he said, "they often turn to what they call religion, hoping to save their skins for eternity. But their change is not necessarily a spiritual change at all. It is just a prudential move. No! I see no sign at all of a real spiritual change, save a steady change for the worse. Having denied the spirit, and given themselves over to wallowing in the slime of sense and self, they are blinded and suffocated by their own filthy little persons. They are so far sunk from spiritual awareness that they idolize personality, sheer individual selfhood. They affirm that every individual is an end in himself (whatever that means), and that the universe is essentially a place of individual soul making, under a God who is the supreme person. And in their indulgence in self-gratulatory worship of individuality, they actually suppose themselves to have far-reaching spiritual vision. But this wrong-headed cult of personality, this idiotic 'personalism,' is a will-o'-the-wisp, sidetracking such feeble spiritual awareness as is current today. As for the masses, they are of course merely obsessed with bodily pleasure, chiefly sexual, and the puerile excitements afforded by mechanism. Their spiritual leaders have betrayed them. They are hopelessly caught among the cogwheels of the silly toy that the smart alecks among them have invented. The press, the cinema, the radio, the aeroplane and now atomic power are today very effectively destroying man. And what matter? If man is past saving, the sooner he destroys himself the better. There is at least a satisfactory poetic justice in his sordid tragedy. He is getting what he deserves, and getting it in the neck. So to hell with him! Other worlds and other races will perhaps be better instruments of the spirit; are perhaps already so, or have been so for aeons and aeons."

  During this invective I had felt an increasing discomfort. No doubt mankind was indeed in a sorry plight; but that the mystic should feel so hotly, so spitefully, about it seemed incongruous. This modern Isaiah, like all his kind, lacked charity. Yes, but a cold voice within me demanded, "Do we, any of us, deserve charity?" At once another, gentler voice replied, "No! Yet to withhold it is to fall short of the spirit."

  Something else also seemed lacking in the mystic's attitude. I said, "You condemn the life of the senses as a snare, yet surely in a way, as you yourself have hinted, it is only through the life of the senses that spirit can manifest itself. Indeed spirit, so far as I can see, is essentially a way of behaving, not a thing or substance; and for us human beings it is a way of behaving in relation to each other and the whole universe primarily through the medium of the physical. And though, of course, we may in some sense kill the spirit by wallowing in sensuality, yet' also, for the clearly conscious individual, sense perception and muscular activity may be experienced sacramentally. There is some kind of important truth in the contention that even the humblest physical action, when done 'for the glory of God,' is a spiritual act."

  My companion would have interrupted, but I was enjoying myself and would not be checked. His fingers drummed soundlessly on the chair's padded arm.

  "You yourself," I said, "must surely have known moments when some sudden gleam of sensuous beauty or some excellence of muscular skill has come with a feeling of religious exercise, as a symbol or epitome of the right relation between individual and universe. The proportions of a leaf or a bird's wing, a view of hills and clouds, the accurate thrust of a spade or the aesthetically right ascent of a rock-- these may sometimes afford a striking experience of, well, of revelation and of right orientation. No! I cannot believe that the world of sensation is not a vehicle of the spirit."

  "Oh!" he said. "It is, it assuredly is. But only to those who constantly look beyond it. If you take it at its face value, not as a symbol of the spiritual, it becomes a mere flypaper for the silly buzzing self. You cannot see it truly and value it rightly till you have killed in yourself all greedy addiction to it. But of course, of course, it can be a vehicle of spirit; a rather crude and gross vehicle, but authentic in its way, and all we have for setting us in the right course."

  I was appeased, but not wholly satisfied. I said, "You must surely admit that creative art is among the highest spiritual activities. And the artist's whole concern is to make a pattern of sense experiences, a spiritually significant pattern, maybe, but a pattern to be perceived by the senses."

 

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