The Way of Power, L. Adams Beck [beach books txt] 📗
- Author: L. Adams Beck
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Sleep is so imminently near to the reality which brushes away illusion and reveals our true selves. Does any man of that order need a more burning hell than to meet himself and see the truth? It has been said that the most appalling experience in ghost stories is that of the man who meets the doppel g�nger—his own double; and I recall a terrible picture of Rossetti’s—“How They Met Themselves”—where fear stares at you from two ravaged faces. But what is the experience of meeting one’s outward semblance to that of meeting one’s inward verisimilitude?
Many dreams visit us of which we miss the importance. The waking self has not the knowledge to interpret them. The counsel is needed then of one instructed who can “divine” as it says in the Bible. The Old and New Testaments are very wonderful dream-books, as they are also in all the psychological matters in which the West begins to explore. It will be remembered in Joseph’s adventures in Egypt—that land of ancient mysteries—how the two servants of Pharaoh and Pharaoh himself dreamed dreams which they knew instinctively were important but could in no way decipher until Joseph “divined” for them. If an adequate study were made of these and the many allied cases of abnormal consciousness we should realize the treasures of knowledge hidden for the seeker. Many thousands might be helped to realization if their dreams could be divined for them, not indeed after the methods of the modern psycho-analyst but by one who understands something of the conditions of that world where the subconscious meets us with face unveiled according to our capacity of understanding.
Let it be understood that the enjoyment of life as presented to us in the Mirror of the Passing Show is by no means hurt or hindered by comprehension partial or complete of its illusions, and is neither stilted nor highbrow, nor tinged with Puritanism. We can afford to love what can no longer deceive or hurt us and every step onward reveals more and more of the joy that is based on this understanding.
Do we enjoy the theater less because we know the show is only a shadow and reflection of life as it seems to us? Is it of less interest because we know that presently the actors will have laid aside their assumed characters with their dresses, and the lights will be extinguished and the stage remain empty and echoing until the next troupe of actors bounds on in the glitter of lights and watching intent faces? Eyes that are unblinded perceive all the more clearly the beauty, irony, and pathos of the show because they know that it must pass, that it dances before them veiling from its actors and most of its spectators the Utterly Lovely, the Wholly Desirable, which at times it attempts to shadow forth.
In India they call this glittering, shifting, changing spectacle the Lila or “Sport of God”—a conception that has meanings too profound to be touched on here, though some minds will see the implication for themselves. And of these implications one of the deepest is the meaning of sleep and dreams, and the state of consciousness into which each one of us is nightly thrown. It is as though the evolving power within cried to the most crass and materialistic of us all:
“You shall not wholly forget your true self and its origin. You bury it in the day with schemes and fancies that heap the earth above it, blinded, deafened and dead. But the night is mine and yours. Then, be you what you will, sot, dollar-chaser, prostitute, thief, blinded with frivolity or with earthly wisdom, drunken with the pleasures of the Passing Show, I take you by the hand and lead you into the Ancient Dark, forcing you to the sight of things lovely, terrible, grotesque, deadly, foreshadowing, and thus compel you to remembrance of that which abides when the fashion of this world passes away.”
It is well to take the reminder of sleep and dreams. In that world those who know carry the Lamp and Sword, and the universe is theirs.
Scattered through ancient books of all the Eastern countries (including the Scriptures we ourselves accept as canonical though at present the so-called miracles which they record do not enjoy a very high reputation) are events so unusual and alien to everyday experience that the witnesses incline to attribute them to the manifestation of supernatural interference and there leave the subject without further explanation. They have been dismissed as a whole in a summary fashion with the apparent conclusion that until our own favored nineteenth and twentieth centuries people were incapable of weighing evidence, were shining examples of mendacity, and were as easily deceived as children. Certainly there were and are many people of this description even in the present day, but it is very difficult to suppose even in connection with the Bible that one or other of these was invariably the case. For my part, in my quest, I have thought it worth while in an extended course of reading to consider these instances and endeavor to relate them to what I have learned further on my way and to note some of them for consideration. Let us for instance glance at the famous travels of Abu-Abdulla Mahommad, known as Ibn Batuta, the most famous of Arab travelers, a man born in the year 1304 and known to scholars all the world over, who made his way as far as China in those difficult days. The editor who set down the travels (70,000 miles) of Ibn Batuta from his own lips concludes thus:
“Here ends what I have put into shape from the memoranda of the Shaik Abu-Abdulla Mahommad Ibn Batuta whom God honor! No person of intelligence can fail to see that this Shaik is the Traveler of our age, and he who should call him the Traveler of the whole Body of Islam would not go beyond the truth.”
In all that I relate I alter no fact nor implication though I condense. I give one singular incident which took place in Silhet in Bengal. Ibn Batuta says:
“My object in going to the hill country was to see a holy personage who lives there, the Shaik Jalaluddin, one of the most eminent of saints and singular of men who had wrought miracles of great note. He was when I saw him a very old man. At a later date I heard from the Shaik’s disciples of his death at the age of one hundred and fifty years. I was also told that for some fifty years he had lived only on milk. When I was going to visit him four of his disciples met me at a distance of two days’ journey from his place of abode. They told me that he had said to the faquirs with him: ‘The traveler from the West is coming: go and meet him.’ Now he knew nothing whatever about me, but the truth had been revealed to him. I set out with these people and arrived at the hermitage outside his cave… . The day I entered his presence he was wearing an ample mantle of goats’ hair which greatly took my fancy, so that I could not help saying to myself: ‘I wish to God that he would give it to me.’ When I went to take leave of him he went into a corner of his cave, took off this mantle and made me put it on. The faquirs told me that the Shaik was not in the habit of wearing it, but put it on at the time of my arrival, saying:—‘The man of the West will ask for this dress. A Pagan king will take it from him and give it to our brother to whom it belongs and for whom it was made.’ When the faquirs told me this, my answer was:
“‘I have the Shaik’s blessing with his mantle and shall take care not to wear it in visiting any king whatever.’
“So I quitted the Shaik and a good while after it happened that when I was traveling in China I came to the city of Khansa [Hang-chow]. The crowd was great and I was separated from my companions. I had on this dress. The viceroy was passing with a great following and observed me. He called me, asked questions and would not let me go but took me in and presented me to the prince who bore the title of king, who asked me questions. While I answered his eyes were fixed with admiration on my dress.
“‘Take it off,’ said the viceroy, and there was no possibility of disobeying, so the prince took the dress and gave me ten robes of honor, a horse caparisoned and a sum of money. I was vexed but then came to my mind the saying that a Pagan king would take my dress, and I was greatly astonished.
“The year following I came to the residences of the King of China at Cambaluc [Peking]. I betook myself to the hermitage of the Shaik Burhan-uddin. He was reading and had on my very dress.
“‘This,’ said I, ‘is the mantle the King of Hang-chow took from me.’
“‘This mantle,’ said the Shaik, ‘was made for me by my brother Jalaluddin and he wrote to me that it would reach me by the hands of such a one.’ So he showed me Jalaluddin’s letter, which I read, marveling at the Shaik’s prophetic powers. On my telling Burhan-uddin the first part of the story he said:
“‘My brother Jalaluddin is above these prodigies now. He had indeed supernatural resources, but now he has passed to the mercy of God.’”
Now this, even if the story could be proved to be unreliable in some details, is an interesting example of what was believed of clairvoyance in a remote time. The shrine of this shaik is still venerated in India. Ibn Batuta gives also an interesting account of what we call hypnotism. A friend of his in discussing events of this kind tells him:
“I went once to see the Shaik [or Khan] in his cave. He took hold of my hand and all at once I imagined myself to be in a great palace where this Shaik was seated upon a throne. I thought there was a crown upon his head. On each side were beautiful handmaidens and there was water about into which fruit was constantly dropping. I took up an apple to eat it, and straightway I found myself again in the cave with the Shaik beside me laughing. I had a bad illness which lasted several months and I never would go again to see that strange being.”
At Hang-chow in China, where he mentions there were many Mohammedans, Ibn Batuta had also a singular experience. There he was entertained by a Mongol viceroy named Kurtia (it may be remembered that at this time the Mongol dynasty, best remembered by the famous Kublai Khan, was ruling China), and great are the accounts Ibn Batuta gives of his noble hospitality in his own palace.
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