The Ninth Vibration, et. al.
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L. Adams Beck >> The Ninth Vibration, et. al.
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How shall I describe the world we entered? The carvings upon the
walls had taken life - they had descended. It was a gathering of
the dreams men have dreamed here of the Gods, yet most real and
actual. They watched in a serenity that set them apart in an
atmosphere of their own - forms of indistinct majesty and august
beauty, absolute, simple, and everlasting. I saw them as one sees
reflections in rippled water - no more. But all faces turned to
the place where now a green and flowering leafage enshrined and
partly hid the living Nature Goddess, as she listened to a voice
that was not dumb to me. I saw her face only in glimpses of an
indescribable sweetness, but an influence came from her presence
like the scent of rainy pine forests, the coolness that breathes
from great rivers, the passion of Spring when she breaks on the
world with a wave of flowers. Healing and life flowed from it.
Understanding also. It seemed I could interpret the very silence
of the trees outside into the expression of their inner life, the
running of the green life-blood in their veins, the delicate
trembling of their finger-tips.
My companion and I were not heeded. We stood hand in hand like
children who have innocently strayed into a palace, gazing in
wonderment. The august life went its way upon its own occasions,
and, if we would, we might watch. Then the voice, clear and cold,
proceeding, as it were, with some story begun before we had
strayed into the Presence, the whole assembly listening in
silence.
"- and as it has been so it will be, for the Law will have the
blind soul carried into a body which is a record of the sins it
has committed, and will not suffer that soul to escape from
rebirth into bodies until it has seen the truth -"
And even as this was said and I listened, knowing myself on the
verge of some great knowledge, I felt sleep beginning to weigh
upon my eyelids. The sound blurred, flowed unsyllabled as a
stream, the girl's hand grew light in mine; she was fading,
becoming unreal; I saw her eyes like faint stars in a mist. They
were gone. Arms seemed to receive me - to lay me to sleep and I
sank below consciousness, and the night took me.
When I awoke the radiant arrows of the morning were shooting
into the long hall where I lay, but as I rose and looked about
me, strange - most strange, ruin encircled me everywhere. The
blue sky was the roof. What I had thought a palace lost in the
jungle, fit to receive its King should he enter, was now a broken
hall of State; the shattered pillars were festooned with waving
weeds, the many coloured lantana grew between the fallen blocks
of marble. Even the sculptures on the walls were difficult to
decipher. Faintly I could trace a hand, a foot, the orb of a
woman's bosom, the gracious outline of some young God, standing
above a crouching worshipper. No more. Yes, and now I saw above
me as the dawn touched it the form of the Dweller in the Windhya
Hills, Parvati the Beautiful, leaning softly over something
breathing music at her feet. Yet I knew I could trace the almost
obliterated sculpture only because I had already seen it defined
in perfect beauty. A deep crack ran across the marble; it was
weathered and stained by many rains, and little ferns grew in the
crevices, but I could reconstruct every line from my own
knowledge. And how? The Parvati of Ranipur differed in many
important details. She stood, bending forward, wheras this sweet
Lady sat. Her attendants were small satyr-like spirits of the
wilds, piping and fluting, in place of the reclining maiden. The
sweeping scrolls of a great halo encircled her whole person. Then
how could I tell what this neary obliterated carving had been? I
groped for the answer and could not find it. I doubted-
"Were such things here as we do speak about?
Or have we eaten of the insane root
That takes the reason captive?"
Memory rushed over me like the sea over dry sands. A girl - there
had been a girl - we had stood with clasped hands to hear a
strange music, but in spite of the spiritual intimacy of those
moments I could not recall her face. I saw it cloudy against a
background of night and dream, the eyes remote as stars, and so
it eluded me. Only her presence and her words sur- vived; "We
meet in the Ninth Vibration. All here is true." But the Ninth
Vibration itself was dream-land. I had never heard the phrase - I
could not tell what was meant, nor whether my apprehension was
true or false. I knew only that the night had taken her and the
dawn denied her, and that, dream or no dream, I stood there with
a pang of loss that even now leaves me wordless.
A bird sang outside in the acacias, clear and shrill for day, and
this awakened my senses and lowered me to the plane where I
became aware of cold and hunger, and was chilled with dew. I
passed down the tumbled steps that had been a stately ascent the
night before and made my way into the jungle by the trail, small
and lost in fern, by which we had come. Again I wandered, and it
was high noon before I heard mule bells at a distance, and, thus
guided, struck down through the green tangle to find myself,
wearied but safe, upon the bridle way that leads to Fagu and the
far Shipki. Two coolies then directed me to The House in the
Woods.
All was anxiety there. Ali Khan had arrived in the night, having
found his way under the guidance of blind flight and fear. He had
brought the news that I was lost in the jungle and amid the
dwellings of demons. It was, of course, hopeless to search in the
dark, though the khansamah and his man had gone as far as they
dared with lanterns and shouting, and with the daylight they
tried again and were even now away. It was useless to reproach
the man even if I had cared to do so. His ready plea was that as
far as men were concerned he was as brave as any (which was true
enough as I had reason to know later) but that when it came to
devilry the Twelve Imaums themselves would think twice before
facing it.
"Inshalla ta-Alla! (If the sublime God wills!) this unworthy one
will one day show the Protector of the poor, that he is a
respectable person and no coward, but it is only the Sahibs who
laugh in the face of devils."
He went off to prepare me some food, consumed with curiosity as
to my adventures, and when I had eaten I found my tiny
whitewashed cell, for the room was little more, and slept for
hours.
Late in the afternoon I waked and looked out. A, low but glowing
sunlight suffused the wild garden reclaimed from the
strangle-hold of the jungle and hemmed in with rocks and forest.
A few simple flowers had been planted here and there, but its
chief beauty was a mountain stream, brown and clear as the eyes
of a dog, that fell from a crag above into a rocky basin,
maidenhair ferns growing in such masses about it that it was
henceforward scarcely more than a woodland voice. Beside it two
great deodars spread their canopies, and there a woman sat in a
low chair, a girl beside her reading aloud. She had thrown her
hat off and the sunshine turned her massed dark hair to bronze.
That was all I could see. I went out and joined them, taking the
note of introduction which Olesen had given me.
I pass over the unessentials of my story; their friendly
greetings and sympathy for my adventure. It set us at ease at
once and I knew my stay would be the happier for their presence
though it is not every woman one would choose as a companion in
the great mountain country. But what is germane to my purpose
must be told, and of this a part is the per- sonality of Brynhild
Ingmar. That she was beautiful I never doubted, though I have
heard it disputed and smiled inwardly as the disputants urged lip
and cheek and shades of rose and lily, weighing and appraising.
Let me describe her as I saw her or, rather, as I can, adding
that even without all this she must still have been beautiful
because of the deep significance to those who had eyes to see or
feel some mysterious element which mingled itself with her
presence comparable only to the delight which the power and
spiritual essence of Nature inspires in all but the dullest
minds. I know I cannot hope to convey this in words. It means
little if I say I thought of all quiet lovely solitary things
when I looked into her calm eyes, - that when she moved it was
like clear springs renewed by flowing, that she seemed the
perfect flowering of a day in June, for these are phrases. Does
Nature know her wonders when she shines in her strength? Does a
woman know the infinite meanings her beauty may have for the
beholder? I cannot tell. Nor can I tell if I saw this girl as she
may have seemed to those who read only the letter of the book and
are blind to its spirit, or in the deepest sense as she really
was in the sight of That which created her and of which she was a
part. Surely it is a proof of the divinity of love that in and
for a moment it lifts the veil of so-called reality and shows
each to the other mysteriously perfect and inspiring as the world
will never see them, but as they exist in the Eternal, and in the
sight of those who have learnt that the material is but the
dream, and the vision of love the truth.
I will say then, for the alphabet of what I knew but cannot tell,
that she had the low broad brows of a Greek Nature Goddess, the
hair swept back wing-like from the temples and massed with a
noble luxuriance. It lay like rippled bronze, suggesting
something strong and serene in its essence. Her eyes were clear
and gray as water, the mouth sweetly curved above a resolute
chin. It was a face which recalled a modelling in marble rather
than the charming pastel and aquarelle of a young woman's
colouring, and somehow I thought of it less as the beauty of a
woman than as some sexless emanation of natural things, and this
impression was strengthened by her height and the long limbs,
slender and strong as those of some youth trained in the
pentathlon, subject to the severest discipline until all that was
superfluous was fined away and the perfect form expressing the
true being emerged. The body was thus more beautiful than the
face, and I may note in passing that this is often the case,
because the face is more directly the index of the restless and
unhappy soul within and can attain true beauty only when the soul
is in harmony with its source.
She was a little like her pale and wearied mother. She might
resemble her still more when the sorrow of this world that
worketh death should have had its will of her. I had yet to learn
that this would never be - that she had found the open door of
escape.
We three spent much time together in the days that followed. I
never tired of their company and I think they did not tire of
mine, for my wanderings through the world and my studies in the
ancient Indian literatures and faiths with the Pandit Devaswami
were of interest to them both though in entirely different ways.
Mrs. Ingmar was a woman who centred all her interests in books
and chiefly in the scientific forms of occult research. She was
no believer in anything outside the range of what she called
human experience. The evidences had convinced her of nothing but
a force as yet unclassified in the scientific categories and all
her interest lay in the undeveloped powers of brain which might
be discovered in the course of ignorant and credulous experiment.
We met therefore on the common ground of rejection of the
so-called occultism of the day, though I knew even then, and how
infinitely better now, that her constructions were wholly
misleading.
Nearly all day she would lie in her chair under the deodars by
the delicate splash and ripple of the stream. Living imprisoned
in the crystal sphere of the intellect she saw the world outside,
painted in few but distinct colours, small, comprehensible,
moving on a logical orbit. I never knew her posed for an
explanation. She had the contented atheism of a certain type of
French mind and found as much ease in it as another kind of sweet
woman does in her rosary and confessional.
"I cannot interest Brynhild," she said, when I knew her better.
"She has no affinity with science. She is simply a nature
worshipper, and in such places as this she seems to draw life
from the inanimate life about her. I have sometimes wondered
whether she might not be developed into a kind of bridge between
the articulate and the inarticulate, so well does she understand
trees and flowers. Her father was like that - he had all sorts of
strange power with animals and plants, and thought he had more
than he had. He could never realize that the energy of nature is
merely mechanical."
"You think all energy is mechanical?"
"Certainly. We shall lay our finger on the mainspring one day and
the mystery will disappear. But as for Brynhild - I gave her the
best education possible and yet she has never understood the
conception of a universe moving on mathematical laws to which we
must submit in body and mind. She has the oddest ideas. I would
not willingly say of a child of mine that she is a mystic, and
yet -"
She shook her head compassionately. But I scarcely heard. My eyes
were fixed on Brynhild, who stood apart, looking steadily out
over the snows. It was a glorious sunset, the west vibrating
with gorgeous colour spilt over in torrents that flooded the sky,
Terrible splendours - hues for which we have no thought - no
name. I had not thought of it as music until I saw her face but
she listened as well as saw, and her expression changed as it
changes when the pomp of a great orchestra breaks upon the
silence. It flashed to the chords of blood-red and gold that was
burning fire. It softened through the fugue of woven crimson
gold and flame, to the melancholy minor of ashes-of-roses and
paling green, and so through all the dying glories that faded
slowly to a tranquil grey and left the world to the silver
melody of one sole star that dawned above the ineffable heights
of the snows. Then she listened as a child does to a bird,
entranced, with a smile like a butterfly on her parted lips. I
never saw such a power of quiet.
She and I were walking next day among the forest ways, the
pine-scented sunshine dappling the dropped frondage. We had been
speaking of her mother. "It is such a misfortune for her," she
said thoughtfully, "that I am not clever. She should have had a
daughter who could have shared her thoughts. She analyses
everything, reasons about everything, and that is quite out of my
reach."
She moved beside me with her wonderful light step - the poise and
balance of a nymph in the Parthenon frieze.
"How do you see things?"
"See? That is the right word. I see things - I never reason about
them. They are. For her they move like figures in a sum. For me
every one of them is a window through which one may look to what
is beyond."
"To where?"
"To what they really are - not what they seem."
I looked at her with interest.
"Did you ever hear of the double vision?"
For this is a subject on which the spiritually learned men of
India, like the great mystics of all the faiths, have much to
say. I had listened with bewilderment and doubt to the
expositions of my Pandit on this very head. Her simple words
seemed for a moment the echo of his deep and searching thought.
Yet it surely could not be. Impossible.
"Never. What does it mean?" She raised clear unveiled eyes. "You
must forgive me for being so stupid, but it is my mother who is
at home with all these scientific phrases. I know none of them."
"It means that for some people the material universe - the things
we see with our eyes - is only a mirage, or say, a symbol, which
either hides or shadows forth the eternal truth. And in that
sense they see things as they really are, not as they seem to the
rest of us. And whether this is the statement of a truth or the
wildest of dreams, I cannot tell."
She did not answer for a moment; then said;
"Are there people who believe this - know it?"
"Certainly. There are people who believe that thought is the only
real thing - that the whole universe is thought made visible.
That we create with our thoughts the very body by which we shall
re-act on the universe in lives to be.
"Do you believe it?"
"I don't know. Do you?"
She paused; looked at me, and then went on:
"You see, I don't think things out. I only feel. But this cannot
interest you."
I felt she was eluding the question. She began to interest me
more than any one I had ever known. She had extraordinary power
of a sort. Once, in the woods, where I was reading in so deep a
shade that she never saw me, I had an amazing vision of her. She
stood in a glade with the sunlight and shade about her; she had
no hat and a sunbeam turned her hair to pale bronze. A small
bright April shower was falling through the sun, and she stood in
pure light that reflected itself in every leaf and grass-blade.
But it was nothing of all this that arrested me, beautiful as it
was. She stood as though life were for the moment suspended;-
then, very softly, she made a low musical sound, infinitely
wooing, from scarcely parted lips, and instantly I saw a bird of
azure plumage flutter down and settle on her shoulder, pluming
himself there in happy security. Again she called softly and
another followed the first. Two flew to her feet, two more to her
breast and hand. They caressed her, clung to her, drew some
joyous influence from her presence. She stood in the glittering
rain like Spring with her birds about her - a wonderful sight.
Then, raising one hand gently with the fingers thrown back she
uttered a different note, perfectly sweet and intimate, and the
branches parted and a young deer with full bright eyes fixed on
her advanced and pushed a soft muzzle into her hand.
In my astonishment I moved, however slightly, and the picture
broke up. The deer sprang back into the trees, the birds
fluttered up in a hurry of feathers, and she turned calm eyes
upon me, as unstartled as if she had known all the time that I
was there.
"You should not have breathed," she said smiling. "They must have
utter quiet."
I rose up and joined her.
"It is a marvel. I can scarcely believe my eyes. How do you do
it?"
"My father taught me. They come. How can I tell?"
She turned away and left me. I thought long over this episode. I
recalled words heard in the place of my studies - words I had
dismissed without any care at the moment. "To those who see,
nothing is alien. They move in the same vibration with all that
has life, be it in bird or flower. And in the Uttermost also, for
all things are One. For such there is no death."
That was beyond me still, but I watched her with profound
interest. She recalled also words I had half forgotten-
"There was nought above me and nought below,
My childhood had not learnt to know;
For what are the voices of birds,
Aye, and of beasts, but words, our words, -
Only so much more sweet."
That might have been written of her. And more.
She had found one day in the woods a flower of a sort I had once
seen in the warm damp forests below Darjiling - ivory white and
shaped like a dove in flight. She wore it that evening on her
bosom. A week later she wore what I took to be another.
"You have had luck," I said; "I never heard of such a thing being
seen so high up, and you have found it twice."
"No, it is the same."
"The same? Impossible. You found it more than a week ago." "I
know. It is ten days. Flowers don't die when one understands them
- not as most people think."
Her mother looked up and said fretfully:
"Since she was a child Brynhild has had that odd idea. That
flower is dead and withered. Throw it away, child. It looks
hideous."
Was it glamour? What was it? I saw the flower dewy fresh in her
bosom She smiled and turned away.
It was that very evening she left the veranda where we were
sitting in the subdued light of a little lamp and passed beyond
where the ray cut the darkness. She went down the perspective of
trees to the edge of he clearing and I rose to follow for it
seemed absolutely unsafe that she should be on the verge of the
panther-haunted woods alone. Mrs. Ingmar turned a page of her
book serenely;
"She will not like it if you go. I cannot imagine that she should
come to harm. She always goes her own way - light or dark."
I returned to my seat and watched steadfastly. At first I could
see nothing but as my sight adjusted itself I saw her a long way
down the clearing that opened the snows, and quite certainly also
I saw something like a huge dog detach itself from the woods and
bound to her feet. It mingled with her dark dress and I lost it.
Mrs. Ingmar said, seeing my anxiety but nothing else; "Her father
was just the same; - he had no fear of anything that lives. No
doubt some people have that power. I have never seen her attract
birds and beasts as he certainly did, but she is quite as fond of
them."
I could not understand her blindness - what I myself had seen
raised questions I found unanswerable, and her mother saw
nothing! Which of us was right? presently she came back slowly
and I ventured no word.
A woodland sorcery, innocent as the dawn, hovered about her. What
was it? Did the mere love of these creatures make a bond between
her soul and theirs, or was the ancient dream true and could she
at times move in the same vibration? I thought of her as a
wood-spirit sometimes, an expression herself of some passion of
beauty in Nature, a thought of snows and starry nights and
flowing rivers made visible in flesh. It is surely when seized
with the urge of some primeval yearning which in man is merely
sexual that Nature conceives her fair forms and manifests them,
for there is a correspondence that runs through all creation.
Here I ask myself - Did I love her? In a sense, yes, deeply, but
not in the common reading of the phrase. I have trembled with
delight before the wild and terrible splendour of the Himalayan
heights-; low golden moons have steeped my soul longing, but I
did not think of these things as mine in any narrow sense, nor so
desire them. They were Angels of the Evangel of beauty. So too
was she. She had none of the "silken nets and traps of adamant,"
she was no sister of the "girls of mild silver or of furious
gold"; - but fair, strong, and her own, a dweller in the House of
Quiet. I did not covet her. I loved her.
Days passed. There came a night when the winds were loosed - no
moon, the stars flickering like blown tapers through driven
clouds, the trees swaying and lamenting.
"There will be rain tomorrow." Mrs. Ingmar said, as we parted for
the night. I closed my door. Some great cat of the woods was
crying harshly outside my window, the sound receding towards the
bridle way. I slept in a dream of tossing seas and ships
labouring among them.
With the sense of a summons I waked - I cannot tell when.
Unmistakable, as if I were called by name. I rose and dressed,
and heard distinctly bare feet passing my door. I opened it
noiselessly and looked out into the little passage way that made
for the entry, and saw nothing but pools of darkness and a dim
light from the square of the window at the end. But the wind had
swept the sky clear with its flying bosom and was sleeping now in
its high places and the air was filled with a mild moony radiance
and a great stillness.
Now let me speak with restraint and exactness. I was not afraid
but felt as I imagine a dog feels in the presence of his master,
conscious of a purpose, a will entirely above his own and
incomprehensible, yet to be obeyed without question. I followed
my reading of the command, bewildered but docile, and
understanding nothing but that I was called.
The lights were out. The house dead silent; the familiar veranda
ghostly in the night. And now I saw a white figure at the head of
the steps - Brynhild. She turned and looked over her shoulder,
her face pale in the moon, and made the same gesture with which
she summoned her birds. I knew her meaning, for now we were
moving in the same rhythm, and followed as she took the lead. How
shall I describe that strange night in the jungle. There were
fire-flies or dancing points of light that recalled them. Perhaps
she was only thinking them - only thinking the moon and the
quiet, for we were in the world where thought is the one reality.
But they went with us in a cloud and faintly lighted our way.
There were exquisite wafts of perfume from hidden flowers
breathing their dreams to the night. Here and there a drowsy bird
stirred and chirped from the roof of darkness, a low note of
content that greeted her passing. It was a path intricate and
winding and how long we went, and where, I cannot tell. But at
last she stooped and parting the boughs before her we stepped
into an open space, and before us - I knew it - I knew it! - The
House of Beauty.
She paused at the foot of the great marble steps and looked at
me.
"We have met here already."
I did not wonder - I could not. In the Ninth vibration surprise
had ceased to be. Why had I not recognized her before - O dull of
heart! That was my only thought. We walk blindfold through the
profound darkness of material nature, the blinder because we
believe we see it. It is only when the doors of the material are
closed that the world appears to man as it exists in the eternal
truth.
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