by Talbot Mundy
“And now Lhaten, the man who came to see us that night at Sidiki’s invitation. Lhaten — so says the abbot of this monastery — is the chela, or disciple, of one of the initiates of the White Lodge. His real name isn’t Lhaten; they never give their real names any more than the real insiders ever reveal themselves to rank outsiders, like ourselves for instance. Lhaten, so to speak, is a connecting link between Sham-bha-la and the world outside, just as Benjamin is in a lesser degree.”
“Lhaten,” said Sidiki ben Mohammed, “is an extremely important personage. If I were not a better man than you describe me he would not have condescended to visit my house. I have carried out his orders very often. It is all one to him whether one is Moslem, Hindu, Christian or any other religion; what he looks for is character, and when he finds it he acts as, for instance, he acted toward me.”
“The point is,” Grim went on, “that Lhaten looked us over, and if Lhaten decides to help us, we’ve a chance to get through — or so I’m told. But — you remember that big brute who came directly afterward — the long-haired, handsome brute who sat in the corner and wouldn’t give his name — the man who knocked you half across the room when you took hold of him! He’s a dugpa. He’s one of their insiders, and he knows as much about us as Lhaten does.
“Lhaten won’t do any man an injury. That other will stop at nothing.”
“Furthermore, you will gain nothing even if you reach Sham-bha-la, and you may lose your lives or your reason in the attempt,” said Sidiki. “As for me, I must remain here in this crow’s-nest monastery. If I should try to return to Leh they would murder me. Dugpas can’t get into this place. But what a life! Oh, what a prospect!”
I went back and lay down on the only bed (the others had mattresses spread on the floor). From the bottom of my heart I wished I had never heard of Rait. Grim seemed keener than ever on the expedition, but I suppose the after effects of fever had left me weak of will as well as body; I could see no good in it. Sham-bha-la might be heaven or hell for ought I cared; I did not wish to go to either place.
But it seemed that we had crossed our Rubicon when we buried Mordecai and set our teeth into the wind across the Zogi-la. We could not return to Leh without risk of being murdered. Once in Leh we were sure to be accused as criminals. Sidiki probably would turn against us, to protect himself against the charge of having helped us toward Tibet; and his girl wife would betray him in the bargain!
It was too much like a nightmare to be interesting. It was cold enough and uncomfortable enough in that monastery cell, with the bitter smoke from tamarisk roots finding its way slowly through the open window to the Zero air. (There was actually frost in the far corner of the room.) To cross seventeen-thousand-feet passes in mid-winter to the gale-swept plateau of Tibet seemed to me, just then, less attractive than death.
I sat up, meaning to tell Grim we had already been mad enough for one lifetime and that the sanest thing we could do now would be to try to return to India and take our chances of arrest. I knew that if I voted to return the others would almost have to return with me; and I was even feeling mean enough to cite my knife wounds (all comparatively superficial and all healing nicely) as a reason for retreat.
But as I opened my mouth to speak I thought of Rait again. I had a mental picture of him in a dungeon, going mad under torture vastly worse than physical and being tricked into writing a letter to me in the belief that one of his torturers had taken pity on him. Rait had been my friend once — or I his, anyhow. I was the only man who had ever been his friend who would be likely to come to his rescue; and though the letter was a trap for me and whomever I might have with me, he probably did not realize that. The words I had meant to say were: “Let’s go back!” What I actually said was:
“What’s the use of arguing! Let’s rescue Rait.”
Grim seemed to think I was in delirium again; he took no notice. No thought about retreat had entered his head. He went on questioning the woman, and presently the old ivory-faced monk came in to change my bandages and smile and nod and treat me as if I were a child recovering from nothing much. He gave me filthy tasting stuff to drink, and laughed as he touched with his toe my chest of medicines that stood beside the bed, then went out again spinning his prayer wheel.
After that I slept, I don’t know how long, and when I awoke Lhaten was in the room. There were no lamps. The atmosphere was thick with smoke because the window shutter had been closed. They were sitting with firelight on their faces from the red-hot embers on the hearth, but Sidiki and his wife were not there.
The firelight made Chullunder Ghose look more than ever like the image of Chenresi on the wall — fat, philosophical, benevolent. Grim’s eyebrows twitched, which meant that his brain was alert. Narayan Singh squatted motionless, from the waist upward like a soldier on parade. Lhaten was talking, in a rather loud voice because of the wind that howled outside, but his voice was humorous and gentle like that of a man telling incredible fairy tales to children.
“ — No, the White Lodge is not at Sham-bha-la, but some of its brotherhood live there. The White Lodge never interferes with individuals, as such, any more than Nature may be said to interfere with individuals, as such. The greatest good of the greatest number always; and no favorites. Do the stars, for instance, limit their light to individuals? Yet one learns more about them than another. How? By trying; by concentration on the study. Do the stars come nearer? No. Do they treat him differently? No. Neither does the White Lodge make distinctions. It is secret, just as electricity was secret before Thales, Gilbert, Faraday, and all the others following them, discovered something about it. Electricity was there, always, but they had to find it; and having found it they could give it to the world, to use or misuse. Was electricity confined to any one place? No. Neither is the White Lodge confined to any one place. But some places are more suitable than others, just as there are certain places where it is more practical to establish electric plants. Climate has a lot to do with thinking.”
“How has the White Lodge kept its secret all these years?” Grim asked.
“Who kept the secret of electricity?” Lhaten answered. “Was there any need to keep it, while men were too stupid, or too busily engaged in cutting one another’s throats (which is the same thing!) even to look for it? They were too superstitious to dare to investigate; afraid to be mocked or burned for heresy. Nowadays men know not much more, and they are as superstitious and as cocksure as ever. Nine tenths of them will mock you if you speak of the existence of the White Lodge; of the remaining tenth, some will try to put you in a lunatic asylum, some will curse you in the name of their religion, and the remainder will try to believe you for various reasons, most of them selfish. Selfishness prevents discovery of anything worthwhile. If you looked back at the history of invention you would find that no worthwhile discovery has ever been made by man or woman who worked solely for the profit there was in it. In every instance the greatness of the discovery has paralleled the degree of unselfishness of the discoverer. Selfishness makes people mentally blind. That is a scientific fact, which some day will be common knowledge.”
Grim asked a poser then:
“Can we four find our way in?”
Lhaten laughed. “I am not your judge,” he answered. “If you wish to turn back now before it is too late, I can protect you as far as the place you started from.”
Grim’s voice shot the answer back at him abruptly:
“None of us wishes to turn back.”
Narayan Singh echoed him:”I shall not turn back.”
Chullunder Ghose sighed: “I am afraid to turn back. I am afraid of my own opinion of myself, which is not good to begin with and would be intolerable if any worse.”
“Rammy, old top, how about you?” Grim asked, for the creaking bed had announced I was awake.
The one thought uppermost in my mind was that we must rescue Rait. I said so. Lhaten answered:
“You will not succeed.”
“We’ll have a crack at it,�
�� said Grim.
There was silence after that for a long time, except that all coughed in the smoke. Lhaten was the next to speak:
“I warn you,” he said. “If you go forward, you can no more turn back than Galileo could, once he had made his discovery — or than Caesar could, after he crossed the Rubicon. I speak of physical impossibilities — as, for instance, putting chickens back into the egg, or frogs back into tadpoles. The mere crossing of the mountains, difficult though it is, is the least of it. Let me try to explain: it is physical — absolutely physical, although not as you understand physics.
“Two of you are from the West and must have seen this often: a man creates a business — lives for it — loves it. That business is himself. Let us say that at fifty or sixty years of age he has a fortune and retires, intending to take life easy. How long is it, as a rule, before he dies? One year? Two years?
“But let us suppose that the same man undertakes a new activity in place of the old one. Instead of dying of the first disease that comes his way he lives his life out to a full conclusion. Why? Because he has regained momentum. He is going forward. He had explored his business until there were no new corners for him; now he explores new realms, and as long as he continues to explore them, he can live until his body wears out. But again, if he ceases, he dies — because nothing in nature is allowed to stand still.
“Now observe, because this applies to you: the man who has given up his business without having fully exhausted its possibilities for him, can return to it and so save himself. He has not yet grown out of the egg. But if he has exhausted all the possibilities for him of what he left, he cannot return to it and live.
“It is for you to consider whether you will not now return to the world you have run away from. It may be you can live your lives out to their full conclusion. But if you decide to go forward, you have first to prove that you are fitted to discover what you seek; and there is no way to prove that except by doing it. Like men engaged in an experiment with unknown forces, you will be in constant danger. If, in spite of all the dangers, you should make your great discovery, you would then be like tadpoles that have evolved into frogs. You would have escaped the tadpole dangers, only to find frog enemies from whom the White Lodge would have to protect you until you should learn how to protect yourselves. And now tell me this: Can you think of one man, who ever discovered anything worthwhile, who has not had to cope with mysterious obstructions placed in his path? Name anyone you like — poet, musician, astronomer, chemist, philosopher — or consider yourselves; have you ever accomplished anything without apparently intelligent obstruction meeting you at every turn! It is like going uphill: there is a law of gravity against you. The desire to go uphill — to discover something, that is — is the impulse of life, and there are those who continually study the laws which govern it. Those are the great ones whom you seek. The downhill pull — the activity of ignorance, prejudice, passion, superstition — that is the law of death; and there are they who study that, who revel in it, who identify themselves with it. They are the enemy; and they are deadly dangerous.
“There are laws which govern all phenomena, and a man who discovers a law of electricity not only can produce effects with it but also can make electricity available to others. Whoever discovers more recondite laws can produce effects with them and make their effects available to others. He may not be able to make others understand the law, but he can give others its benefit or impose on them the resultant evil — as in the case of electricity, for instance, or, in another instance, poison gas.
“A man who would not know how to begin to make electric light can have its benefit, because of the mental labors of Faraday, Edison, Tesla and others. A man who would not know how to begin to make poison gas can obtain it and use it against others, or suffer from it, because of the mental processes of those who have studied how to deal death.
“Now practically all men who have made a great discovery have done so in the hope of benefiting all humanity. Perhaps the chemist who discovered poison gas intended it to be used for beneficial purposes; and so it can be used. It is the misuse of a force that makes it evil, and it is possible to misuse any force whatever — the forces of steam, electricity, chemistry, religion — and the prodigious force of thought.
“Therefore, they who study life, and who have discovered many of the secrets of the universe, oblige themselves to guard those secrets; because there are others, who would use them to make mischief. They who study death are no less in communion with occult forces than are they who study life, and they are equally whole-hearted in their persistence — as you can readily understand if you remember how gravity opposes every effort to rise upward. Follow up that analogy and recall how great teachers have been attacked, vilified, and very often, murdered.
“If a man makes a great medical discovery, what happens? Do not the charlatans pounce on his discovery and use it for their own enrichment? Now do you begin to see why they, who are known by rumor only, save to a very few who have seen and spoken with them, are obliged to live in secret and to hide their knowledge from the world? Could they dare to release their knowledge except to individuals whom they know and trust?
“And who are those whom they shall trust? Is it not obvious they must be of a certain character? Morals depend on character, remember, and not character on morals. A man’s religion makes no difference — none whatever. Can two men belonging to different religions not at one and the same moment discover a new comet or an unknown law of mathematics? To pursue evil a man must have evil tendencies which will increase through cultivation as he becomes more and more responsive to the impulses that govern evil. Owls live in the dark. Whales swim in the sea. Men with scientific tendencies discover laws of nature. Only those who have the character pertaining to the path they choose can succeed in the end; and though a shoemaker, like Kabir, can become a poet, that was because he had the poet’s nature. In the same way, only they who have the necessary character can find or be received into the White Lodge, although anybody can receive its benefits, as anyone may read the poems of Kabir.
“And they who are the Keepers of the Secrets can read character as you can read a book.”
Lhaten ceased and there was silence until Narayan Singh stirred the embers with a stick, selecting a few pieces of dry wood and putting them to burn carefully so as not to increase the smoke.
“As for myself, I have slain many men,” he remarked. “How is that as to character?”
“How many men did the Lord Buddha slay?” asked Lhaten.
“None,” he answered.
“There you err,” said Lhaten. “Did he not teach? Were there not many slain simply because they approved his teachings and adopted them?”
“I slew with mine own hand,” the Sikh said.
“For gain? From fear? In passion?” Lhaten asked. “Nay, nay! Don’t answer! I am not your judge. It is not I who must say yes or no.”
“I know that. If you were he, I would fight you,” said Narayan Singh.
Chullunder Ghose piped up, his voice peculiarly strained and squeaky, though it was normally a well-placed baritone:
“Am personally peaceful, never having slain man or beast. Moreover, I have taught nothing that could cause men to be killed. I am Failed B.A., but I have more intelligence than the examiners who marked my papers. Might I not be a suitable jar, for the teachers to pour their wisdom into me, that I may pour it out again!”
“In driblets, at a profit?” Lhaten asked.
“But I must live,” said the babu.
“Live then,” Lhaten answered. “It is not I who will prevent. The Wisdom can neither be bought nor sold, being like virtue which, if man or woman should sell it, could never have been virtue.”
“Can a man know beforehand whether he can make the grade?” asked Grim.
“If not, how should he succeed?” asked Lhaten. “A man may know he can succeed, and yet fail; but unless he knows he can, he never will.”
There was a
nother long silence, broken only by the sound of coughing and the gusts of wind that rattled the wooden shutter. Then Grim asked a question that was uppermost in my mind:
“Who gives these their authority?”
Lhaten laughed. “Who gave Galileo his authority to fend out that the earth moves? The authorities forbade him, didn’t they? They forced him to recant, and he was much too sensible to make a martyr of himself and flatter his own vanity by being burned alive. He had let the truth out; and the same authority within himself that gave him leave to do that also warned him to protect himself by letting the fools believe they had suppressed truth. But truth, once out, can never be suppressed, although it can be imitated and misused. The proof of a man’s authority is in its consequences. There is no authority from outside. All comes from within. But they are rare who recognize authority; and they are still more rare who have the courage to obey it. Some call it conscience, which is a lame word, having fallen from a high place.”
Once more there was silence, but the wind outside howled like a host of furies and somewhere in the monastery building bronze bells summoned monks to midnight ritual. Again Narayan Singh put dry wood on the embers and the flame leaped up illuminating Grim’s face. Lhaten was in darkness.
“Who are these Mahatmas — men?” Grim asked.
“Very plain men,” Lhaten answered. “Wisdom avoids Vanity. Was Newton vain? Or Beethoven? Or Lao Tse?”
“Who taught them what they know?” Grim asked.
“Who taught the years to roll onward? Or the earth to move around the sun? There are greater than they, whom they know from afar off, dimly, even as you have heard of them and seek them. The Mahatmas, to themselves, are ordinary men, too fallible, beset by their own perplexities. Our problems are very simple to them, because they mastered such elementary conditions as ours — in former lives; which is why they are called Masters. They have advanced to higher problems. Does a child at school not have to learn his alphabet, which to the one who can read has become part of his very nature, like the ability to breathe? Next, does he not learn to read, which to him may be difficult, although foolishly easy to the older child who has advanced to foreign languages. Does he not have to learn arithmetic by practice? Does that not lead on to algebra, and to equations, and to calculus — each step requiring mastery by hard work consciously directed to the end in view? Are there not realms to be mastered, each advance revealing new realms unimaginable to the student who has not yet reached them — so that he who knows the most is most aware of how illimitable knowledge is?
