by Talbot Mundy
“Did I? Don’t I! Well, you are right. That’s true, I don’t believe in it. I know it. So I can’t possibly believe or disbelieve. Prayer consists in knowing, and in glorying in what one knows. But what can one expect, if one prays to the very liar and the father of the trouble that one wants to overcome? I hadn’t really been praying at all. I had been flattering my personal ego, and what the Hindus call maya. But now I really began to pray. First for as much humility as I could possibly endure. Humility until it hurt. I demanded it. Not, meekness, humility.”
“Nancy, what a weird prayer!”
“And because I wasn’t lying this time, and the Lord is my shepherd, I received what I asked for — some humility. Some. Then I remembered the parable of the Prodigal Son. It paraphrased itself: ‘Soul, I have sinned against my being, and before thee, and am no more worthy to be called even thy person.’”
“Nancy, that’s very beautiful. But how could you pray to your soul if you are your soul? Isn’t that the opposite of what you’ve been telling me, over and over, for three days?”
“Oh, words!” said Nancy. “Words! What feeble instruments they are. What liars they are! We experience a glimpse of reality. But can we tell it? Not even the poets can tell. Not even Shakespeare could. Even Jesus’s words have been twisted to mean the opposite of what he did mean. Elsa, each of us must make our own experience. After that, we know. And though we can still commit treason, we can never again quite unknow. We will always know, after we once have known, that it is treason we commit when we identify ourselves with the illusion and obey that. Then we feel homesick when we do wrong. But upward evolution is a wordless experience. We can’t tell it, not in actual words. We can only hint to those we wish to help. Does this help you to understand: I yearned upward toward my superconscious being — my real being — toward beauty and intelligence and light — and prayed for enough intelligence to do the beautifully right thing now — the right little thing — the exactly right thing — not next week — now! The prayer was answered, instantly, although it didn’t seem so at the moment.”
“Then you didn’t really know it had been answered?”
“Indeed I knew. But I hadn’t tried to instruct wisdom, so of course I didn’t know what form the answer would take. It began to dawn on me that I was only a beginner. I was a recruit, not a commander in chief, in a war against a whole world’s ignorance, my own included. I had been trying to do what not even Jesus attempted. Then I saw my teacher.”
“Old Ugly-face?”
“Yes. All that time, I hadn’t been able even to call up a mental picture of him. But I saw him clearly now. I was clairvoyant again — just a little — not much — but enough. I wasn’t clairaudient. He said nothing. But I knew I was on the way again. It restored my faith. Then the phone rang. A total stranger asked whether I could spare a nurse for the Jesuit Mission.”
“The Mission where we stayed last night?”
“Yes. Of course, there wasn’t a spare nurse. I couldn’t even spare myself for more than a few hours. But by getting one of the overworked teachers to do a double shift to relieve me, and by going without sleep—”
“You mean, you were doing nursing duty all this time?”
“Of course.”
“From the way you told it, I supposed you had been meditating.”
Nancy raised an eyebrow. “Your ‘supposer,’ my dear, is just a trifle out of order. It needs adjusting. — I drove to the Jesuit Mission and found them in a terrible way, burying their own dead. Priests using shovels. Converts and servants, some dead, some dying, two or three half dead from overwork, and the rest run away. Luckily I had brought some supplies. Those Jesuits had given away everything. They were living, or rather dying, on native bread and boiled rice. They hadn’t missed a mass. Father Patrick had been given up for dead — extreme unction and all the rest of it. He was alone in a room, so I wrapped him in blankets and carried him off in the tonga. No car in those days. The other Jesuits were so weak they could hardly help me to lift him. Fortunately he was unconscious, so he couldn’t resist. The tonga jolted him pretty badly. He almost did die on the way to Darjeeling. But he recovered. He and I have been respectful of each other’s claws ever since.”
“Claws?”
“Two tigers in a forest. We politely admire each other.”
“But wasn’t he grateful?”
“My dear! Why in the world should he be grateful to me? He remembered his manners, if that is what you mean. But how could a man, who is convinced that God is the dispenser of all good, possibly be grateful to anyone but God? He was quite consistent. Jesuits are soldiers, remember. Should a soldier on the field of battle be grateful to another soldier from a different regiment, who has merely obeyed the command of the Great Commander in Chief? Acknowledge his quality, yes. Salute him as a fellow soldier, yes. But gratitude?”
“Nancy, you talk almost as if you were a Jesuit!”
Nancy squealed with merry memory. “Elsa, Father Patrick and I both made the mistake of beginning to try to convert each other, for the glory of each other’s Lord. We began by delicately hinting at each other’s underlying error. He accused me of Jesuitry. I called him a materialist. Honestly we did. We both meant it, and we still think that about each other.”
“I can believe anything about a Jesuit,” said Elsa, “but I still don’t understand why we went there last night. Do they know I am going to Tibet?”
“They do.”
“Do you mean that! Who can have told them?”
“There is very little that goes on that the Jesuits don’t know!”
“Then it is true that their spies are everywhere?”
“Don’t be silly. They don’t even bother themselves to ask questions. Jesuits think. They are trained, highly organized, disciplined thinkers. They create a positive — call it that, just to give it a name — a positive thought-force that is immeasurably stronger than any electric current. An electric current is a mere illustration of thought-force. Jesuits are plus-minded, positive, dynamic thinkers. They induce, without even trying to, a secondary thought-force in others. So the minus-minded, negative people keep them plied with information, very often without knowing it.”
“But why should Father Patrick accuse you of Jesuitry? You of all people!”
“He considers me a casuist. He believes I can’t understand the difference between his way and mine.”
“Do you understand it?”
“Perhaps there isn’t any. But the signs read that he took a vow of poverty and obedience. I took a vow of affluence and disobedience.”
“A vow? Did you? Of disobedience to whom? You obey your spiritual teacher, don’t you? I understood you to say that.”
“Disobedience, yes, to the death. Rebellion, with every scrap of intuition and common sense and courage I can muster — against the atrocious lie that we are miserable paupers with souls that need saving. My dear, a soul that needed saving wouldn’t be worth the trouble.”
“I still don’t understand why we went to the Jesuit Mission.”
“To demonstrate to you the impossibility — at least for anyone of your limited experience — of thinking independently, in opposition to highly organized and well-disciplined thought. I wanted to teach you tactics, as well as strategy.”
“Then there’s a way of—”
“Three ways. Two are defeatist. One can dive below their influence, and go to the devil. Thousands of people do it; they drown in materialism; deserting, malingering, degenerate Jesuits do it themselves. Another way is, to oppose, be beaten, and surrender: become a meek lamb and wait until you are dead to find out what it is that you bought by surrendering your soul to trustees. Or, you can rise above it. Not even a Jesuit can out-think, or out- pray you, if you refuse to meet him on his own ground. Take higher ground. One only learns by experience how to avoid being caught. If a Jesuit knew there is a higher ground, he would get there first and have a sheepfold all ready to herd you into. They are good shepherds, if y
ou like being a sheep. Their strength consists in thought-propaganda, which is far more powerful than the spoken or printed word. Propaganda, even when true, is a form of violence, which is a product of impatience, which in turn is sacrifice to fear.”
“But, Nancy, isn’t your conversation propaganda?”
“Yes. Make no mistake about that. But it is aimed at freeing your consciousness now, instead of enslaving you for the sake of a promised land in the hereafter. Yes, mine is propaganda. But if you should let it control your thought instead of waking you up to fight your own battle, I would repudiate you. I would shake you off.”
“Tell me this, Nancy. You say you prayed. Then your teacher sent you to save a Jesuit.”
“Indeed he did not!”
“But you said you saw Old Ugly-face, and then—”
“My seeing him meant this: that through humility I had reached a state — or let us call it a balance of consciousness — not too remote from his. I was, at least momentarily, on the higher plane of consciousness that he had taught me how to attain. I was catching up with him. A real idea could reach me. It could penetrate the mess of opinions I had been floundering in. A real idea knows no boundaries, no limits; no one can monopolize it. And there is no such thing as a partial, incomplete idea, nor any possibility of an idea not finding work to do. Consequently, because of that law of supply and demand, some total stranger was stirred by the same idea, and he phoned me to ask for the loan of a nurse.”
“But you hadn’t one!”
“Well? The idea set me moving in the right direction. It employed me. It saved the life of Father Patrick. And among many other things it made it possible for you, all these years later, to return to Tibet.”
“Nancy, are you stretching your imagination?”
“No, dear. But I do hope I am awakening yours. It so needs it!”
“What has Father Patrick to do with my returning to Tibet?”
“It would be a breach of confidence to answer that question. Someone — not Father Patrick — warned me by telephone — and I told Morgan Lewis — that Bulah Singh’s meddling had alarmed the Chief of Police of Sikkim. You and Andrew would have been held up if that warning hadn’t come through. And it would not have come through unless Father Patrick and I were on excellent terms. But understand me: Father Patrick himself did not send the warning.”
“Nancy, do you really feel you can trust him?”
“So implicitly, my dear, that I would tell him anything he might ask, unless it had been told to me in strict confidence.”
Elsa laughed. She couldn’t help it. “Nancy, you’re too bewildering! Just now you said God forbid you should love a Jesuit!”
“Yes.” She chuckled. “I hope God heard me! Does this answer your question? I am my soul. I am not this foolish old woman-person who gets disturbed by illusions, and hates Jesuits, and sometimes has a headache. Doesn’t that apply equally to Father Patrick? He is a brave, unselfish soul. Integrity is one of his dimensions. He isn’t that superstitious masochist who hates talkative females and crosses himself when he sees me coming. He is a soldier in a shabby soutane. Father Patrick is one of the few men I know who forces me to remember who I really am, and who he really is. He wouldn’t be endurable on any other terms. That is what Jesus meant by saying love your enemies. Don’t love their objectionable persons, or expect them to love yours. Love them by remembering who they really are. Then they will love you. Do you see the difference?”
“I am beginning to. Does it always work?”
“You mean for beginners like you and me? No indeed! Not in one lifetime! Not in this world! We have a long way to go before we can finish that part of our education. So we had better get a good start, hadn’t we?”
“But if it’s really true, why doesn’t it always work?”
“Does the Golden Rule work when applied by a conceited egotist? Torquemada thought he was obeying the Golden Rule when he tortured heretics. The rule is really so simple that the complicated illusion of personality blinds us to it. We can only learn gradually, little by little. But each little that we learn is one step on the road of evolution.”
“Nancy. Tell me this. If I should try to follow your teaching, do you think it would help me to become Tom’s real wife, so that he and I would love each other and be genuinely happy?”
Nancy studied her a moment. “Genuine? Happy? How should I know? Happiness, remember, is a temporary state of mind — a temporary calm, destroyed by the first ripple that comes along. As an end in itself it is like the pot of gold at the end of the rainbow. As something to have and to hold, it is as disappointing as money.”
“But we can’t get along without money. And unless we’re happy now and then, what is life worth living for? We’d be better off dead — annihilated — nonexistent. I have often wished that might happen to me. Can’t you offer some encouragement about Tom and me?”
Nancy thought a moment. Then: “I was never tempted to become a fortune teller. What I can tell you is this: happiness is either a fool’s paradise, or else a by-product of continual striving toward spiritual consciousness. True happiness is a sensation of momentary balance. When we remember who and what we really are, we do no wrong and we injure no one. Even our worst mistakes turn out to others’ benefit; and they become profitable lessons for us.”
“But how can one learn all this! Oh, how I wish you were coming with us to Tibet! Weeks and weeks on the march, and you to talk with. One might—”
Nancy’s laugh interrupted: “Does it occur to you, my dear, that selfishness isn’t a wish? It is a repudiation of your own higher intelligence.”
“Oh. No, I hadn’t thought of that. I suppose it was selfish. You have been utterly kind in coming this far. But—”
“Tonight,” said Nancy, “if we are both as unselfish as we can make ourselves be, I will help you to see why you don’t need me. I can prove it to you.”
CHAPTER 24
Elsa and Nancy made themselves more comfortable in the smoke-smeared monastery guest room than Andrew had done three nights earlier. Andrew, confusing luxury with comfort, usually dispensed with both when alone, although he wasn’t, like Tom Grayne, a Spartan about it; for his own purposes, they merely weren’t worth worrying about. Elsa, on the other hand, intuitively knew which little luxuries make discomfort bearable; and Nancy was an old, old hand at creating comfort where there was none. So the car had disgorged some inconsiderable trifles, and the gloomy room became a swept and habitable refuge.
The bearded old chauffeur, shawled in double blankets, sat on a mat outside the door, protecting his lunatic charges against only God could guess what consequences of their madness. He even stood off the monks who brought food — himself carried in the food — himself tasted it first in Nancy’s presence to make sure the monks hadn’t doped it with magical drugs — himself carried out the dishes and set them at a distance down the corridor where the kitchen crew might recover them without bringing their devilish persons too near. He had eaten his own dry corn and peas porridge. No monkish muck for him. He had brought his old army water bottle, filled in Darjeeling at a hydrant on which no priestly shadow had ever cast its curse. By the light of a Japanese lantern he sat reading a Life of Lenin — mistranslated from the French, with footnotes and interpolated comments by a babu who had been to Moscow. Revolution snorted through the old man’s nostrils as he read.
Nancy and Elsa, in their own folding canvas chairs, sat talking, less at random (though it sounded like it) than for the sake of avoiding a moody silence or any reference to Elsa’s baby. This was the first, and next to the last, room that the tent-born baby had lived in. Each woman dreaded the other’s reaction to any mention of it. Particularly, Elsa dreaded to be told that her secret sweet-sad longing for the child was morbid self-pity. She knew it wasn’t, but she felt sure Nancy would say it was. Nancy, full of her own intention, was afraid of a mood that might make Elsa past-bound and unreceptive. So they talked about the monastery, and about the learned o
ld arch hypocrite who ruled it and was all things by turns but nothing long — excepting always a keeper of secrets.
“Old Gombaria understands,” said Nancy, “that secrecy is a secret’s only value. That is why he can be trusted. He hoards secrets like a jackdaw.”
But memories are irrepressible, one leading to the next. Elsa could hardly keep her eyes away from the smoke-smeared painting on the wall by the bed. The patch where Andrew’s handkerchief had rubbed away the soot was still noticeable. On her way southward she had lain with her child in her arms, staring at the picture of the woman being boiled in oil in hell. All the thoughts of those hours returned, now, unbidden, including the questions with which she had tortured Andrew’s patience. Especially she had wondered how, when, why religious men had invented such cruel eternities in store for one another. She had thought about the Spanish Inquisition; and about Dante’s Inferno, and Fox’s Book of Martyrs; the vicar at home had lent her both books, illustrated in fiendish detail, during his efforts to convict her of the Witch of Endor’s sin of seeing with unveiled eyes. She had discussed those books with Andrew — forced him to discuss them. In her mind’s eye she saw him now, seated on one of the bent-wood chairs, imperturbably answering child-like questions while he carved away at a chunk of wood with his clasp knife. He had remarked, in one of his frowning, analytical moments, that torture, in any circumstances, probably reveals the victim’s own latent cruelty. She had disagreed. They had argued about it and she lost her temper because he had refused to lose his. After that, he had read to her from his old, thumbed copy of Browning. Andrew always chanted poetry, maintaining that to read it in an ordinary conversational voice is to neglect the magic that conveys its meaning. She could almost hear him now, as if the walls retained the record:
“ ... I count life just a stuff
To try the soul’s strength on.”
The baby had fallen asleep to the sound of his reading. She remembered wondering what Andrew’s child would be like if he should ever marry. And then she wondered what Andrew would say to a woman he loved, and whether any woman ever would understand him. She didn’t. He was as dependable, but as incomprehensible as — Suddenly Elsa left her chair and pulled the bed away from the wall.
