The Ninth Vibration, et. al.

L >> L. Adams Beck >> The Ninth Vibration, et. al.

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"How all the Mogul Emperors loved running water," said Vanna. "I
can see them leaning over it in their carved pavilions with
delicate dark faces and pensive eyes beneath their turbans, lost
in the endless reverie of the East while liquid melody passes
into their dream. It was the music they best loved."

She was leading me into the royal garden below, where the young
river flows beneath the pavilion set above and across the rush of
the water.

"I remember before I came to India," she went on, "there were
certain words and phrases that meant the whole East to me. It was
an enchantment. The. first flash picture I had was Milton's-

'Dark faces with white silken turbans wreathed.'

and it still is. I have thought ever since that every man should
wear a turban. It dignifies the un-comeliest and it is quite
curious to see how many inches a man descends in the scale of
beauty the moment he takes it off and you see only the skull-cap
about which they wind it. They wind it with wonderful skill too.
I have seen a man take eighteen yards of muslin and throw it
round his head with a few turns, and in five or six minutes the
beautiful folds were all in order and he looked like a king. Some
of the Gujars here wear black ones and they are very effective
and worth painting - the black folds and the sullen tempestuous
black brows underneath."

We sat in the pavilion for awhile looking down on the rushing
water, and she spoke of Akbar, the greatest of the Moguls, and
spoke with a curious personal touch, as I thought.

"I wish you would try to write a story of him - one on more human
lines than has been done yet. No one has accounted for the
passionate quest of truth that was the real secret of his life.
Strange in an Oriental despot if you think of it! It really can
only be understood from the Buddhist belief, which curiously
seems to have been the only one he neglected, that a mysterious
Karma influenced all his thoughts. If I tell you as a key-note
for your story, that in a past life he had been a Buddhist priest
- one who had fallen away, would that in any way account to you
for attempts to recover the lost way? Try to think that out, and
to write the story, not as a Western mind sees it, but pure
East."

"That would be a great book to write if one could catch the
voices of the past. But how to do it?"

"I will give you one day a little book that may help you. The
other story I wish you would write is the story of a Dancer of
Peshawar. There is a connection between the two - a story of ruin
and repentance."

"Will you tell it to me?"

"A part. In this same book you will find much more, hut not all.
All cannot be told. You must imagine much. But I think your
imagination will be true."

"Why do you think so?"

"Because in these few days you have learnt so much. You have seen
the Ninefold Flower, and the rain spirits. You will soon hear the
Flute of Krishna which none can hear who cannot dream true."

That night I heard it. I waked, suddenly, to music, and standing
in the door of my tent, in the dead silence of the night, lit
only by a few low stars, I heard the poignant notes of a flute.
If it had called my name it could not have summoned me more
clearly, and I followed without a thought of delay, forgetting
even Vanna in the strange urgency that filled me. The music was
elusive, seeming to come first from one side, then from the
other, but finally I tracked it as a bee does a flower by the
scent, to the gate of the royal garden - the pleasure place of
the dead Emperors.

The gate stood ajar - strange! for I had seen the custodian close
it that evening. Now it stood wide and I went in, walking
noiselessly over the dewy grass. I knew and could not tell how,
that I must be noiseless. Passing as if I were guided, down the
course of the strong young river, I came to the pavilion that
spanned it - the place where we had stood that afternoon - and
there to my profound amazement, I saw Vanna, leaning against a
slight wooden pillar. As if she had expected me, she laid one
finger on her lip, and stretching out her hand, took mine and
drew me beside her as a mother might a child. And instantly I
saw!

On the further bank a young man in a strange diadem or miter of
jewels, bare-breasted and beautiful, stood among the flowering
oleanders, one foot lightly crossed over the other as he stood.
He was like an image of pale radiant gold, and I could have sworn
that the light came from within rather than fell upon him, for
the night was very dark. He held the flute to his lips, and as I
looked, I became aware that the noise of the rushing water was
tapering off into a murmur scarcely louder than that of a summer
bee in the heart of a rose. Therefore the music rose like a
fountain of crystal drops, cold, clear, and of an entrancing
sweetness, and the face above it was such that I had no power to
turn my eyes away. How shall I say what it was? All I had ever
desired, dreamed, hoped, prayed, looked at me from the remote
beauty of the eyes and with the most persuasive gentleness
entreated me, rather than commanded to follow fearlessly and win.
But these are words, and words shaped in the rough mould of
thought cannot convey the deep desire that would have hurled me
to his feet if Vanna had not held me with a firm restraining
hand. Looking up in adoring love to the dark face was a ring of
woodland creatures. I thought I could distinguish the white
clouded robe of a snow- leopard, the soft clumsiness of a young
bear, and many more, but these shifted and blurred like dream
creatures - I could not be sure of them nor define their numbers.
The eyes of the Player looked down upon their passionate delight
with careless kindness.

Dim images passed through my mind. Orpheus - No, this was no
Greek. Pan-yet again, No. Where were the pipes, the goat hoofs?
The young Dionysos - No, there were strange jewels instead of his
vines. And then Vanna's voice said as if from a great distance;

"Krishna - the Beloved." And I said aloud, "I see!" And even as I
said it the whole picture blurred together like a dream, and I
was alone in the pavilion and the water was foaming past me. Had
I walked in my sleep, I thought, as I made my way hack? As I
gained the garden gate, before me, like a snowflake, I saw the
Ninefold Flower.

When I told her next day, speaking of it as a dream, she said
simply; "They have opened the door to you. You will not need me
soon.

"I shall always need you. You have taught me everything. I could
see nothing last night until you took my hand."

"I was not there," she said smiling. "It was only the thought of
me, and you can have that when I am very far away. I was sleeping
in my tent. What you called in me then you can always call, even
if I am - dead."

"That is a word which is beginning to have no meaning for me. You
have said things to me - no, thought them, that have made me
doubt if there is room in the universe for the thing we have
called death."

She smiled her sweet wise smile.

"Where we are death is not. Where death is we are not. But you
will understand better soon."

Our march curving took us by the Mogul gardens of Achibal, and
the glorious ruins of the great Temple at Martund, and so down to
Bawan with its crystal waters and that loveliest camping ground
beside them. A mighty grove of chenar trees, so huge that I felt
as if we were in a great sea cave where the air is dyed with the
deep shadowy green of the inmost ocean, and the murmuring of the
myriad leaves was like a sea at rest. I looked up into the noble
height and my memory of Westminster dwindled, for this led on and
up to the infinite blue, and at night the stars hung like fruit
upon the branches. The water ran with a great joyous rush of
release from the mountain behind, but was first received in a
broad basin full of sacred fish and reflecting a little temple of
Maheshwara and one of Surya the Sun. Here in this basin the water
lay pure and still as an ecstasy, and beside it was musing the
young Brahman priest who served the temple. Since I had joined
Vanna I had begun with her help to study a little Hindustani, and
with an aptitude for language could understand here and there. I
caught a word or two as she spoke with him that startled me, when
the high-bred ascetic face turned serenely upon her, and he
addressed her as "My sister," adding a sentence beyond my
learning, but which she willingly translated later. - "May He who
sits above the Mysteries, have mercy upon thy rebirth."

She said afterwards;

"How beautiful some of these men are. It seems a different type
of beauty from ours, nearer to nature and the old gods. Look at
that priest - the tall figure, the clear olive skin, the dark
level brows, the long lashes that make a soft gloom about the
eyes - eyes that have the fathomless depth of a deer's, the proud
arch of the lip. I think there is no country where aristocracy is
more clearly marked than in India. The Brahmans are aristocrats
of the world. You see it is a religious aristocracy as well. It
has everything that can foster pride and exclusiveness. They
spring from the Mouth of Deity. They are His word incarnate. Not
many kings are of the Brahman caste, and the Brahmans look down
upon them from Sovereign heights. I have known men who would not
eat with their own rulers who would have drunk the water that
washed the Brahmans' feet."

She took me that day, the Brahman with us, to see a cave in the
mountain. We climbed up the face of the cliff to where a little
tree grew on a ledge, and the black mouth yawned. We went in and
often it was so low we had to stoop, leaving the sunlight behind
until it was like a dim eye glimmering in the velvet blackness.
The air was dank and cold and presently obscene with the smell of
bats, and alive with their wings, as they came sweeping about us,
gibbering and squeaking. I thought of the rush of the ghosts,
blown like dead leaves in the Odyssey. And then a small rock
chamber branched off, and in this, lit by a bit of burning wood,
we saw the bones of a holy man who lived and died there four
hundred years ago. Think of it! He lived there always, with the
slow dropping of water from the dead weight of the mountain above
his head, drop by drop tolling the minutes away: the little
groping feet through the cave that would bring him food and
drink, hurrying into the warmth and sunlight again, and his only
companion the sacred Lingam which means the Creative Energy that
sets the worlds dancing for joy round the sun - that, and the
black solitude to sit down beside him. Surely his bones can
hardly be dryer and colder now than they were then! There must be
strange ecstasies in such a life - wild visions in the dark, or
it could never be endured.

And so, in marches of about ten miles a day, we came to Pahlgam
on the banks of the dancing Lidar. There was now only three weeks
left of the time she had promised. After a few days at Pahlgam
the march would turn and bend its way back to Srinagar, and to -
what? I could not believe it was to separation - in her lovely
kindness she had grown so close to me that, even for the sake of
friendship, I believed our paths must run together to the end,
and there were moments when I could still half convince myself
that I had grown as necessary to her as she was to me. No - not
as necessary, for she was life and soul to me, but a part of her
daily experience that she valued and would not easily part with.
That evening we were sitting outside the tents, near the camp
fire, of pine logs and cones, the leaping flames making the night
beautiful with gold and leaping sparks, in an attempt to reach
the mellow splendours of the moon. The men, in various attitudes
of rest, were lying about, and one had been telling a story which
had just ended in excitement and loud applause.

"These are Mahomedans," said Vanna, "and it is only a story of
love and fighting like the Arabian Nights. If they had been
Hindus, it might well have been of Krishna or of Rama and Sita.
Their faith comes from an earlier time and they still see
visions. The Moslem is a hard practical faith for men - men of
the world too. It is not visionary now, though it once had its
great mysteries."

"I wish you would tell me what you think of the visions or
apparitions of the gods that are seen here. Is it all illusion?
Tell me your thought."

"How difficult that is to answer. I suppose if love and faith are
strong enough they will always create the vibrations to which the
greater vibrations respond, and so make God in their own image at
any time or place. But that they call up what is the truest
reality I have never doubted. There is no shadow without a
substance. The substance is beyond us but under certain
conditions the shadow is projected and we see it.

"Have I seen or has it been dream?"

"I cannot tell. It may have been the impress of my mind on yours,
for I see such things always. You say I took your hand?"

"Take it now."

She obeyed, and instantly, as I felt the firm cool clasp, I heard
the rain of music through the pines - the Flute Player was
passing. She dropped it smiling and the sweet sound ceased.

"You see! How can I tell what you have seen? You will know better
when I am gone. You will stand alone then."

"You will not go - you cannot. I have seen how you have loved all
this wonderful time. I believe it has been as dear to you as to
me. And every day I have loved you more. I depend upon you for
everything that makes life worth living. You could not - you who
are so gentle - you could not commit the senseless cruelty of
leaving me when you have taught me to love you with every beat of
my heart. I have been patient - I have held myself in, but I must
speak now. Marry me, and teach me. I know nothing. You know all I
need to know. For pity's sake be my wife."

I had not meant to say it; it broke from me in the firelight
moonlight with a power that I could not stay. She looked at me
with a disarming gentleness.

"Is this fair? Do you remember how at Peshawar I told you I
thought it was a dangerous experiment, and that it would make
things harder for you. But you took the risk like a brave man
because you felt there were things to be gained - knowledge,
insight, beauty. Have you not gained them?"

"Yes. Absolutely."

"Then, is it all loss if I go?"

"Not all. But loss I dare not face."

"I will tell you this. I could not stay if I would. Do you
remember the old man on the way to Vernag? He told me that I must
very soon take up an entirely new life. I have no choice, though
if I had I would still do it."

There was silence and down a long arcade, without any touch of
her hand I heard the music, receding with exquisite modulations
to a very great distance, and between the pillared stems, I saw a
faint light.

"Do you wish to go?"

"Entirely. But I shall not forget you, Stephen. I will tell you
something. For me, since I came to India, the gate that shuts us
out at birth has opened. How shall I explain? Do you remember
Kipling's 'Finest Story in the World'?"

"Yes. Fiction!"

"Not fiction - true, whether he knew it or no. But for me the
door has opened wide. First, I remembered piecemeal, with wide
gaps, then more connectedly. Then, at the end of the first year,
I met one day at Cawnpore, an ascetic, an old man of great beauty
and wisdom, and he was able by his own knowledge to enlighten
mine. Not wholly - much has come since then. Has come, some of it
in ways you could not understand now, but much by direct sight
and hearing. Long, long ago I lived in Peshawar, and my story was
a sorrowful one. I will tell you a little before I go."

"I hold you to your promise. What is there I cannot believe when
you tell me? But does that life put you altogether away from me?
Was there no place for me in any of your memories that has drawn
us together now? Give me a little hope that in the eternal
pilgrimage there is some bond between us and some rebirth where
we may met again."

"I will tell you that also before we part. I have grown to
believe that you do love me - and therefore love something which
is infinitely above me."

"And do you love me at all? Am I nothing, Vanna - Vanna?"

"My friend," she said, and laid her hand on mine.

A silence, and then she spoke, very low.

"You must be prepared for very great change, Stephen, and yet
believe that it does not really change things at all. See how
even the gods pass and do not change! The early gods of India are
gone and Shiva, Vishnu, Krishna have taken their places and are
one and the same. The old Buddhist stories say that in heaven
"The flowers of the garland the God wore are withered, his robes
of majesty are waxed old and faded; he falls from his high
estate, and is re-born into a new life." But he lives still in
the young God who is born among men. The gods cannot die, nor can
we nor anything that has life. Now I must go in.

I sat long in the moonlight thinking. The whole camp was sunk in
sleep and the young dawn was waking upon the peaks when I turned
in.

The days that were left we spent in wandering up the Lidar River
to the hills that are the first ramp of the ascent to the great
heights. We found the damp corners where the mushrooms grow like
pearls - the mushrooms of which she said - "To me they have
always been fairy things. To see them in the silver-grey dew of
the early mornings - mysteriously there like the manna in the
desert - they are elfin plunder, and as a child I was half afraid
of them. No wonder they are the darlings of folklore, especially
in Celtic countries where the Little People move in the
starlight. Strange to think they are here too among strange
gods!"

We climbed to where the wild peonies bloom in glory that few eyes
see, and the rosy beds of wild sweet strawberries ripen. Every
hour brought with it some new delight, some exquisiteness of
sight or of words that I shall remember for ever. She sat one day
on a rock, holding the sculptured leaves and massive seed-vessels
of some glorious plant that the Kashmiris believe has magic
virtues hidden in the seeds of pure rose embedded in the white
down.

"If you fast for three days and eat nine of these in the Night of
No Moon, you can rise on the air light as thistledown and stand
on the peak of Haramoukh. And on Haramoukh, as you know it is
believed, the gods dwell. There was a man here who tried this
enchantment. He was a changed man for ever after, wandering and
muttering to himself and avoiding all human intercourse as far as
he could. He was no Kashmiri - A Jat from the Punjab, and they
showed him to me when I was here with the Meryons, and told me he
would speak to none. But I knew he would speak to me, and he
did."

"Did he tell you anything of what he had seen in the high world
up yonder?"

"He said he had seen the Dream of the God. I could not get more
than that. But there are many people here who believe that the
Universe as we know it is but an image in the dream of Ishvara,
the Universal Spirit - in whom are all the gods - and that when
He ceases to dream we pass again into the Night of Brahm, and all
is darkness until the Spirit of God moves again on the face of
the waters. There are few temples to Brahm. He is above and
beyond all direct worship."

"Do you think he had seen anything?"

"What do I know? Will you eat the seeds? The Night of No Moon
will soon be here."

She held out the seed-vessels, laughing. I write that down but
how record the lovely light of kindliness in her eyes - the
almost submissive gentleness that yet was a defense stronger
than steel. I never knew - how should I? - whether she was
sitting by my side or heavens away from me in her own strange
world. But always she was a sweetness that I could not reach, a
cup of nectar that I might not drink, unalterably her own and
never mine, and yet - my friend.

She showed me the wild track up into the mountains where the
Pilgrims go to pay their devotions at the Great God's shrine in
the awful heights, regretting that we were too early for that
most wonderful sight. Above where we were sitting the river fell
in a tormented white cascade, crashing arid feathering into
spray-dust of diamonds. An eagle was flying above it with a
mighty spread of wings that seemed almost double-jointed in the
middle - they curved and flapped so wide and free. The fierce
head was outstretched with the rake of a plundering galley as he
swept down the wind, seeking his meat from God, and passed
majestic from our sight. The valley beneath us was littered with
enormous boulders spilt from the ancient hollows of the hills. It
must have been a great sight when the giants set them trundling
down in work or play! - I said this to Vanna, who was looking
down upon it with meditative eyes. She roused herself.

"Yes, this really is Giant-Land up here - everything is so huge.
And when they quarrel up in the heights - in Jotunheim - and the
black storms come down the valleys it is like colossal laughter
or clumsy boisterous anger. And the Frost giants are still at
work up there with their great axes of frost and rain. They fling
down the side of a mountain or make fresh ways for the rivers.
About sixty years ago - far above here - they tore down a
mountain side and damned up the mighty Indus, so that for months
he was a lake, shut back in the hills. But the river giants are
no less strong up here in the heights of the world, and lie lay
brooding and hiding his time. And then one awful day he tore the
barrier down and roared down the valley carrying death and ruin
with him, and swept away a whole Sikh army among other
unconsidered trifles. That must have been a soul-shaking sight."

She spoke on, and as she spoke I saw. What are her words as I
record them? Stray dead leaves pressed in a book - the life and
grace dead. Yet I record, for she taught me what I believe the
world should learn, that the Buddhist philosophers are right when
they teach that all forms of what we call matter are really but
aggregates of spiritual units, and that life itself is a curtain
hiding reality as the vast veil of day conceals from our sight
the countless orbs of space. So that the purified mind even while
prisoned in the body, may enter into union with the Real and,
according to attainment, see it as it is.

She was an interpreter because she believed this truth
profoundly. She saw the spiritual essence beneath the lovely
illusion of matter, and the air about her was radiant with the
motion of strange forces for which the dull world has many names
aiming indeed at the truth, but falling - O how far short of her
calm perception! She was indeed of a Household higher than the
Household of Faith. She had received enlightenment. She beheld
with open eyes.

Next day our camp was struck and we turned our faces again to
Srinagar and to the day of parting. I set down but one strange
incident of our journey, of which I did not speak even to her.

We were camping at Bijbehara, awaiting our house boat, and the
site was by the Maharaja's lodge above the little town. It was
midnight and I was sleepless - the shadow of the near future was
upon me. I wandered down to the lovely old wooded bridge across
the Jhelum, where the strong young trees grow up from the piles.
Beyond it the moon was shining on the ancient Hindu remains close
to the new temple, and as I stood on the bridge I could see the
figure of a man in deepest meditation by the ruins. He was no
European. I saw the straight dignified folds of the robes. But it
was not surprising he should be there and I should have thought
no more of it, had I not heard at that instant from the further
side of the river the music of the Flute. I cannot hope to
describe that music to any who have not heard it. Suffice it to
say that where it calls he who hears must follow whether in the
body or the spirit. Nor can I now tell in which I followed. One
day it will call me across the River of Death, and I shall ford
it or sink in the immeasurable depths and either will be well.

But immediately I was at the other side of the river, standing by
the stone Bull of Shiva where he kneels before the Symbol, and
looking steadfastly upon me a few paces away was a man in the
dress of a Buddhist monk. He wore the yellow robe that leaves one
shoulder bare; his head was bare also and he held in one hand a
small bowl like a stemless chalice. I knew I was seeing a very
strange inexplicable sight - one that in Kashmir should be
incredible, but I put wonder aside for I knew now that I was
moving in the sphere where the incredible may well be the actual.
His expression was of the most unbroken calm. If I compare it to
the passionless gaze of the Sphinx I misrepresent, for the Riddle
of the Sphinx still awaits solution, but in this face was a noble
acquiescence and a content that had it vibrated must have passed
into joy.

Words or their equivalent passed between us. I felt his voice.

"You have heard the music of the Flute?"

"I have heard."

"What has it given?"

"A consuming longing."

"It is the music of the Eternal. The creeds and the faiths are
the words that men have set to that melody. Listening, it will
lead you to Wisdom. Day by day you will interpret more surely."

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