Part 4

My wise ones tell me many stories as we sit on the roof in the hour between the Twilights. But the story of my Wisest one herself is one of my favourites. You must know that she is a very holy woman indeed. At her birth, so many years ago that her devotees bring you data to prove her a hundred years old, it was prophesied that she would be “a religious,” and her Father built her a Shrine, and taught her things which only Priests may know. She can perform every _jog_, and can read one’s thoughts in any language. Her face is the face of her who has attained, and her dignity and self-poise I have nowhere seen surpassed. She dresses oddly--the sex of the devotee must not be proclaimed--in the nether garments of a man, _i.e._, loose white drapery about the legs, and a long coat. Her hair is worn in coils on the top of her head, and round her neck hang sacred beads, and Kali’s necklet of skulls in gold and enamel work. To her the symbol is not gruesome. Kali, she will tell you, was the power of God, the “Energy of the Gods,” and the heads represent the Giants of wickedness whom she has slain.

She is extraordinary in her dealings with people, so quick to discern true from false; so fearless in her denunciation of hypocrisy, withal that she is never aught but courteous. I love sitting beside her when pilgrims come, pilgrims from all parts of India who fall at her feet and pass on to other shrines, or linger in the outer courtyard on the chance of a word; the meaning of a text, some family or caste difficulty, advice as to the moment’s physical or worldly need, all are brought to her; for she shuts out nothing, and is a dear _shrewd_ Saint about business other than her own. I have known her wave off a pilgrim--“She would not insult her feet” was the reason given. She seemed to gather all that mattered about this type of person in a single glance. To one who came in curiosity pure and simple, though he pretended interest in some Sanskrit text, she said, quietly looking him in the eyes while he fumbled over his unveracities: “No! you shall not hear whence I came, nor anything about me.” But to another more sincere, though equally curious, she said--he had spoken no question--“I come from a land where women ride and men wage war.”

In 1857 she was already a famous Sanskritist, so powerful that her influence, purely religious, was mistaken for political. She was suspected of collusion with Khande Rao Peishwa, and a guard of soldiers was stationed round her cell and Temple. When the country settled down, she wandered to the different places of pilgrimage all over India, meditating and buying merit. Everywhere had she been, everywhere that is holy, and as an old woman, eyes dim with prayer, throat drawn with fasting, she has settled in Bengal and devotes herself to the religious education of her community. “I have spent a lifetime in prayer: now I am ready to work,” she explains. But the praying is not over.

From 5 to 9 of a morning, she shuts herself away in her House of Gods, and no one dare disturb her. Here in India, where shrines are many, and there is no false shame about entering and praying--doors wide--nay, where the Godling sits by the wayside, and where it is a common thing to see a woman stand on a highway, head against some outer wall of a Temple--the moment’s contact a prayer, or bowing to the Earth on some crowded pavement--it is curious that not one of her devotees or friends has any knowledge of what is within her House of Gods--whether it is empty or has the whole panthology. Yet all alike--alien in faith, disciple, or visiting devotee--have seen her face as she leaves that house after her communings with eternity; and well--is there not a story of the Mount of Transfiguration?

So, she cured herself of a serious illness during which, thinking it (perhaps meaning it) to be her last, she had summoned to her side by some telepathic power the faithful from all parts of North India. I say “meaning,” because I am forced to believe that the Indian woman who has her will in training can die at will: more rarely she can live at will. Probably the latter is the rarer because, poor thing, she has so much more incentive to die than to live.

Well, this time my Wisest of the Wise had elected to live after all. Her choice was not incompatible with her faith in a God who held the keys of Life and Death. It was only that, being given free will, it was within her power to steal the key of the House of Death.

“Has one ever stolen the key of the House of Life?” I asked.

“I know of none such,” was the cautious answer of wisdom.

Then I--“Talk to me, Mother, of Life and Death. What is Life?”

And she--“A dream in the heart of a dream.... It is as if one should sleep, and sleeping dream that he was dead. That dream within a dream is this, that men call Life.”

“And Death?”

“To-morrow’s dream. The next-door house. God’s tenant am I in this house in which you find me. But agreement I have none. God will tell me to quit, nor give me notice. Death is but the house I next inhabit. There will be other houses after that.” Death, it would seem, is but a change of house, we have failed to repair the present tenement, or it is too small for us, or our neighbourhood is unsuitable, so we are given the chance of another, and after that, perchance, yet another and another, through all the lives appointed to us. But our personalities remain. We can never sink those.

Once again, she talked of Death as “the Innermost Dream--but we shall wake.” “The end of the Death dream is only sleep, that is Life: when we wake from life, it is to Life Eternal.”

“And what is that?”

“Rest--in the perfect attainment of all truth, of all knowledge and of all reality.”

The body, I gather, is degradation to the soul. Any “house” is in a measure degradation and belongs to the state of progress. Some day we shall be free of all houses. We shall lose ourselves in the Great Soul. That is the final “Twilight”--the time of Union for each individual soul.

“Then shall there be no more Death.”...

She ceased speaking, my Wisest of the Wise, and silence fell between us as we looked together at the dying Sun.

Oh! the gray and silver gray on the water. Oh! the gold, limpid, liquid, lambent gold in the sky and on the water....

“And the King of Death is but the first Sunset.”...

_P.S._--Since the above was written, my Wisest of the Wise has arrived at her Sunset hour. Her going was very beautiful and very simple: shortly before her time was come, she left the Town where she dwelt, for the holy city of Death. She was no worse and no better than she had been any day the year and more, but she knew, apparently. Then, one morning, she said quite calmly to her disciples, after the ceremonial bath and _pooja_, “This is the last time I shall worship in this house” (her body); “now, waste no time in regret, let us talk the things we should be sorry to have left unsaid.”... And all that day the faithful gathered about her, and she expounded the scriptures with an insight unequalled even by herself. She ate nothing--“Why prop up the house that is tumbling?”

At night she asked to be taken down to the Sacred River--a Hindu dies with her feet in the water; and there she sat among her friends on the stone steps of the Ghat, claiming no support, no physical comfort, now silent, now setting afloat some beautiful thought in words that will always live for those who loved her ... and then just in the gray mystery of the dawn hour, “It is right,” she said, and fell back.... They put her into a boat and took her across to the Ghat of the Soul’s departure, and here they slipped her gently into the Stream ... for that is all the burial service for one who is holy.

Later, her disciples came to me with faces radiant. “She has attained,” they said. “Yes!” said the Holy Man, Truth-named, “she has attained in that she elected not to attain;” and then they told me that, sitting that night of stars and dark spaces by the River of Death, one had said to her: “You are blessed; you have attained.” And she made answer: “Nay! it was given me to attain; but I put it aside, desiring re-birth once more for the sake of the work, to which I have put my hand, here among you.”

“And a man’s future is even as his desires. That is true truth, Miss Sahib!” concluded the Wise man, Truth-named.

VII

THE WISE MAN--“TRUTH-NAMED”

It was at the house of my Wise Woman that first I saw him. He wore a straight long robe, the colour of the pilgrim flag, or of the inner lining of the fruit of knowledge when you break through the sheath in which it shelters from the world.

About his head were wound fold on fold of muslin of the same mystic hue, and the way of winding, and his speech, bewrayed him of the Punjab.

But as I have said, you must never locate the holy. He walked with head erect, straight as an arrow, nor receiving nor giving salutation to any; and he came to me where I stood talking to my Wisest of the Wise, and “When,” said he, “may I come to talk with the Miss Sahib of the big-little things?” And I: “How know you that I like to talk of these things? and what are they?”

“I know; the Miss Sahib knows. When may I come?”

So we found a convenient season; and he, the free, made of himself for the sake of removing ignorance, a slave of time, coming punctually Sunday after Sunday to talk the big-little things, “Life and Death,” and “Whence we come,” and “Whither we are bound.”

With eyes screwed together in earnestness, one finger on the tip of his nose as he meditated, he would talk hour after hour; nor did he discourage discussion, he begged it. It was one way he said of teaching us to know ourselves. “And how shall we know God until we know ourselves?” “Be self-knowers. God is within, and it is the God in us that seeks to find God.” ... “God! by what sign shall we know Him? how conceive? Imagine a world without space or place or time or anything created. Imagine only light and light and light, everywhere pulsing, throbbing.... From the beginning was that, and only that, and that was God. But with God exists the Power and Mercy of God, not separately, but as closely allied as sweetness to sugar, as the scent of the rose to the rose, as the colour of a flower to the flower.... Men talk of one God as if there could be two or three. There’s just God--the All-pervading, the Essence of Being, the heart of the heart of Beauty, the great first Flame which lights every flame that leaps into life.... Light and light and light, brilliance at the soul of brilliance ... the God-spark in every soul, in everything created ... only by recognizing this shall we recognize God, there is no other way.

“... Yes! the windows of the soul get dimmed and the flame gives no light. Is that the fault of the flame? Clean the windows of the soul; such work is allowed to man, such only, not his to create Light, _that_ was and is from Eternity.

“One day all the several sparks of light will go back to the Great Central Light whence they came, the soul will find God.... What need to make haste? What need to fret? Every soul must find God at long last ... light will return to Light.”

In countries loved of the Buddha one sees by the roadside a little shrub with white leaves among the green. The Buddha passed that way, is the legend, and the shrub has kept memory of the passing. I have sometimes thought that so among the leafy professions of mankind there are some white souls that keep the memory of the passing of the Great God. The “Truth-Named” is one such.

I remember on one occasion thanking him when he had said things which gave food for thought.

“Huh!” he said, “Miss Sahib, that was not yet talk of God. I did but try to make a clearing in the jungle where we might sit down and meditate about these things.” Another day he said: “There are three diseases in the world--_Actual Sin_” (the breaking of what we call commandments), “this disease can be cured by good works; _Restlessness_, to be cured by meditation; and _Joylessness_, to be cured by making occasion to give joy to others. The mark of a true religion is Joy.”

Referring to the first cure, I said: “Then you believe in the efficacy of good works, oh! Truth-Named Singh.” And he said: “Good works are fetters, fetters of gold, but still fetters.”

* * * * *

When the Datura tree hung out its burden of bells, and the pilgrim season had begun, he came to me with as much excitement as his calm abstraction from all emotion permitted. And, “There is a _Lat_ (Lord) Swami,” he said, “sitting in a grove at Dum Dum. Would the Miss Sahib like to talk with him?”

“Is he holy?” I asked.

“I know him not, but he is called a _Lat_ Swami, he should be so. He has been teaching the people of the farther England (America) about God and the one religion, it is said, and he has many disciples in every country. Besides, he speaks the language of the Miss Sahib’s friend (English), and it is a chance for the Miss Sahib’s friend to question in her own tongue, as she cannot me.” ...

So we went, and the first time lost our way. We met strolling minstrels and were offered seats at wedding feasts, and fighting rams for our diversion, but no Swami sitting by his Lake of Lotuses.

Our Wise Man was distressed: “I gave my word you would come. Even by mistake we cannot break a word, it is damage to Sainthood”--one’s own he meant. “Make a speedy occasion to remove the disease of this error. I myself will conduct you.”

But no! he would not arrange the train by which we were to go. “Shall I who am free, compel any to be slaves to time? Come when you will, I will sit at the Station all day.” It was late afternoon when we could make the expedition but the “Truth-Named” was there. He had awaited us since morning, meditating undisturbed by the bustle of a Railway Station. We were soon in the suburbs among palm-trees, and rank undergrowth, and we found the _Lat Swami_ clad in yellow-silk robes, sitting cross-legged in a grove of mango-trees, beside a bed of white lotuses. His face did not appeal, but that we mused, might be prejudice.

“Ask him the big-little questions,” prompted our Wise Man--himself retiring deferentially to the level of the least of the Lat Swami’s disciples. And we asked, only to hear in pompous English, “I refer you to my book, which has been well-reviewed by the ‘Daily Mail.’ My Disciple will explain.” And before our gasp of astonishment had spent itself, came the disciple, a follower from that “farther England” who, grovelling before the Master, produced the book.

But we were busy inventing excuse for flight. Silence, as we walked away. Then said our Truth-Named, tolerant humour in his eyes, “So the Miss Sahib’s Friend, and the Miss Sahib liked not that Holy Man?”

“_No!_” I said, “we did not.” Pause--then, “I am glad the Miss Sahib’s Friend, and the Miss Sahib did not like that Holy Man. I am glad that they gave not their discrimination a sickness by liking him.”

“But you took us!”

“How could I know? Besides, in a garden one should smell every flower.... To me it seemeth that the foolish ones of the Farther England have robbed him of his virtue by their admiration and praises. It is ever so. Of virtue do women rob even the holy. Once that Swami had excuse for knowledge.”

“What is the name of her whom he called Disciple?”

“How can I know? Foolish one--what need for other name?”

On the way back we had proof of our Wise Man’s reality of religion. He would not travel in our carriage behind the “fire horse,” politely went next door: but just as the train was about to move we saw him literally kicked out by some non-Indian, masquerading as a gentleman.

The poor old “Truth-Named” found room elsewhere, and nothing could be done till we arrived at our destination, when we waited for him to apologize and atone for the unknown.

“Huh,” he said, “_that_, that was nothing. Forget it, Miss Sahib. It is not. It could not hurt me, since I did not resent it.” ... “His mind carried not fruit of ignorance,” as he said on another occasion. Even so, in his simplicity has he often enunciated the greatest of truths.

I have talked in a book of women of Holy Men, for priests and women are allies the world over, and in India, particularly is the influence noticeable. A priest is often the only man with whom a Purdahnashin may talk, before whom she may appear unveiled: and, as I have said before, there is a secret, albeit about things religious, between wife and priest to which even the woman’s husband may not be party. Not backward has the Priesthood been in availing itself of its privileges. Where his learning is not likely to attract, the man of ashes has an inheritance of superstition to which no woman is proof, and from which there can be no appeal.

The “Truth-Named” is fearless in denunciation of the ash-smeared and degraded type of Priest. “In the golden age the only Priest was Prayer. If we would only study ourselves, travel in the unknown country of our minds and souls and personalities, we should need no Guru, save God. Priests, of all religions, keep men’s eyes bandaged that they should not see except through the Priest: but the written word and the book of ourselves is open to all.”

“There is but one religion--the service of man and personal holiness by realization of God. No need for rules of conduct, for commandments. Realize God and even the desire to transgress is slain. But realize God and the place even of sin in the scheme of the world will be clear. There is nothing which is outside God. Yes--this is a hard doctrine, to be learnt only by sitting aloof from men, sitting in a place of green trees, in solitudes where blow the winds of God, fresh and pure.”

Perhaps one reason of the ascendency of the Priesthood was that at one time the priests were the moneylenders of the Community. We know this was so even as late as the eighteenth century. Say a man wished to borrow £3: he went to the Faqir who put the sum into his hand in the presence of witnesses, but about 15_s._ had to be returned to himself as a present. Interest was never less than 12 per cent. and the lender kept a watch-dog at the expense of the borrower, to see that he did not run away! So the poor wretch seldom got more than half the sum he borrowed, while, to compel repayment, children were often sold, and most cruelly tortured.

It is curious to recall in this connection the old Sanskritic tale of the learner who went to the Sage to ask what might be the best penance for deeds of evil.

“Gifts of Cows, of land, and especially of gold to Brahmins.”

“Why specially gold?” “The purifying power of gold. Oh! Purusurama,” was the answer, “is very great. They who bestow it, bestow the Gods.”

“How so?” said the obstinate Learner.

“Know, oh! Hero, that _Agni_ (fire) comprehends all the Gods, and gold is of the essence of Agni.”

Women Priestesses there are; but not as a regular institution of the Purdah. If it is right to conclude that the system of seclusion is encouraged and italicized by the Priests in order to preserve the man’s monopoly, the reason will be obvious.

Also it would seem as though except as a religious elect before or from birth, or remarkable for peculiar learning, like my Holiness, the Priestess chooses the humbler position of the service of a Guru, leaving guidance to her male counterpart. Some act procurator in positions not possible of relation; but there must be exceptions, and one charming young Priestess at least have I known who owed her attractions neither to the sacred learning nor to prophecy. She was from the North country, and appeared suddenly one pilgrim season in the vicinity of Nasik, in Western India. Tall and beautiful, of commanding presence, clad in shell-pink draperies; a close-cropped head, discoloured to a brilliant copper by the fumes of the opium fire--such was the figure that stood, pilgrim flag in hand, by the roadside, asking protection of a passing stranger. Remarkable to look upon she would have been in any costume, but thus, against the glow of a low sun-setting, she was arresting.

And her story? full of humour and pathos. She and a younger Brother, orphaned early in life, were left to the care of an Uncle. The property was the Brother’s with reversion to herself. The Brother died while still a child; helped out of life, she conceived when old enough to understand these things, and the property was hers and she bride-elect to her cousin. She had loved her Brother passionately--Oh! you saw that, in her eyes and in the picture she left with you of her attempts to push Death away from the threshold. “Stroke the brindled cow,” was the last prescription of the old Priestess, who sat in the near-by forest: and the child brought in the old cow to the neglected bedside. Then, in a frenzy, she ran to the old Priestess: “Cut off my hair”--she was but ten years old--“and initiate me. It will, maybe, please the Gods, and spare the life.” And the Priestess, alleged seller of God-favours, initiated the child, being not unaware of her position and prospects.

But when the beloved Brother died, and the Uncle sought to recover the child, she refused to come, nor could she now as initiated Priestess be bride to the cousin. So a bribe to the opium eater procured silence, and the disciple her freedom.

It was a wandering life--now grove, now cave, now hill camping-ground--the little Priestess sitting over the opium fire, her head on a prayer-stick, meditating--her instructress raking in the offerings. A prayer-stick is shaped so--T: and the head lies on the arm stretched across the bar, while the fumes of the opium fire produce drowsiness. But the life of prayer and meditation, in the name of her Brother, became very real to the Baby Priestess: and as she grew, and her Old-Woman-Guru used her to attract devotees to the Shrine, there was many a tussle between righteousness and unrighteousness, till policy suggested the Child’s sanctity as the more lasting bait.

She must have been about twenty when they made the pilgrimage to Nasik; and here the old woman met her own one-time Guru, and he claimed the prayer-stick of the beautiful grand-disciple as a talisman. Perhaps he claimed more, we were not told; but the rupture on refusal brought her to that wayside throwing of herself on the mercy of a stranger.... She was wonderfully adaptive to the demands of civilization, cast away her opium pipe, and even struggled bravely with forgotten memories of reading and writing; but she loved best to sit huddled up in the dusk and tell stories of her wanderings. What stories they were!

“In every house a Father, in every house a Mother”--a great phrase with her; and soon, the wander spirit proved too much for her. The road called her, and she went--comet-like. This was many years ago; but I still hope to come upon the copper-headed owner of the prayer-stick.

Once I thought I had found her at a place of pilgrimage in company with a holy woman who had gained her reputation for sanctity in a way unusual. She was an untaught Mathematician, sat at the mouth of a cave drawing geometrical figures in the sand, and spelling out for herself the problems which the world of books has dedicated to other names than hers. The pilgrims thought the triangles and parabolas magic, and would wag wise heads over the Mathematician at work; quite content if after the cabalistic musings which had nothing to do with their goods and ills she announced to the inquirer that there would be a good harvest, or that his son would die and his enemy be degraded in rebirth.

But if it were indeed my Comet whose copper head hung over a prayer-stick behind the Mathematician, I got not opportunity for speech or sight. Yet, I am thinking that some day, when the sun is low, that column of burnished light will wait for me once more beside the Pilgrim’s way.

VIII

THE NASAL TEST

A STUDY OF CASTE