by Talbot Mundy
“How would you distinguish,” he asked, “between a spiritual, all-wise impulse that awakens healthy energy and an evil impulse that inevitably harms, and ultimately, somewhere, sometime, brings its offspring home to its begetter?”
I answered, “No one can distinguish. It’s a harsh world, and whatever we do, someone suffers. We rob Peter to pay Paul. We can’t help it.”
He paused again, while I thought of the alternatives between which I must choose on the following day. They were humiliating, cruel. I dreaded both.
“Shall I tell you what beauty is?” he asked after a while.
“If you please.”
“No. It must be as you please. Ask, and I will tell you.”
“Please do.”
“Beauty is a dimension of spirit.”
He let that sink in, while I gazed at the moonlit- valley, and the mountains, bathed, drenched in beauty.
But the mountains were matter, not spirit. Beauty a dimension?
It was several minutes before he spoke again: “Beauty is the first of spirit’s infinite dimensions that we learn to recognize. It is not with the eyes, but with the spirit, that we perceive beauty. The eyes see matter, but the soul sees spirit. Trust your soul, and you shall see miracles. The beauty that your soul perceives is a dimension of the life that knows no death.”
“But we die,” I remarked. “The age of miracles is dead, if there ever was such an age. I have seen plenty of so-called miracles, performed by so-called holy men — yogis and people like that. Most of them were plain fakes. The rest were of no practical use whatever.”
“Were they beautiful?” he retorted.
“No. They seemed to me stupid. Some of them were revolting. Why should one want to stick knives in himself? Or to be able to sit staring at the sun? Or to be buried alive for fourteen days? Or to walk on fire?”
“One should not wish things,” he answered. “But is it our business what other men do? What do you do?”
I laughed. I can almost hear the echo of my own laugh, thirty-five years later.
“Do?” I said. “ ‘Man that is born of a woman is of few days, and full of trouble.’ I am no exception. I get into trouble.”
“Is there any beauty in your trouble?” he asked.
There was a woman. She was more beautiful than any other woman I had ever seen. But I didn’t speak of her. I said:
“It seems to interest you, so I’ll tell you this much — mine is a damned grim predicament. There’s no beauty in that. If I can’t find a practical solution, before tomorrow—”
He interrupted. It was the only time he did interrupt, looking straight at me, speaking not loud but with spastic vehemence, as if he warned me of danger:
“Practical? Sahib, the only practical solutions are mystical ones, since they bring newness. The impractical ones are the brain-bred phantasies that feed desire. Is it mystically wise, or beautiful, to lend one’s strength to fear by determining how cruel fear shall be? Did we do that to the tiger? Nay! We perceived his beauty. And what happened?”
“Are you telling me,” I asked him, “that a mystic can solve any problem?”
He looked at me again. “I am telling you this: the key to mysticism, and to all the limitless perfection of the higher law, is Beauty. As it penetrates our conciousness, it heals, and harms no one. Meditate on Beauty, and your own soul — your higher consciousness — will lead you, gradually, into—”
“Must one go into a trance?” I interrupted. “Has one got to be like those yogis who sit cross-legged, and breathe once a minute, and go for days without food and drink? You don’t look to me like a man who does that kind of thing.”
“Are those things beautiful?” he answered. “Sahib, meditate on beauty. It unfolds, little by little, and one by one, the true dimensions of Reality. Then the unreal and the cruel fade like darkness before sunlight. Magic, remember, is nothing but spiritual law applied to material needs.”
I remarked, “I have heard of black magic. Is that spiritual?”
“Yes.” he answered. “But is it beautiful to build on cruelty, hatred, scorn — and to use lies as weapons? It is learned, too soon, by those who use gray magic, which looks less ugly.”
“What is gray magic?”
“It is the use of beautiful words as a glittering means to cruel and selfish ends.”
“But how can anyone help being selfish?”
“Is beauty selfish?” he retorted. “Sahib, I am telling you what ten thousand years of selfish self-affliction, and austerity, and learning of long words, could never teach.”
“Is mysticism incompatible with normal activities?” I asked. “Love — business — fun — amusement?”
He laughed. “Try it! A true mystic is a man of action. He thinks, and then does. He does well, because he wills rightly. Sahib, stay here a while and let Reality make us a miracle. I need one also.”
Side by side we sat until the stars paled in the sky. At intervals he spoke. I listened. For the most part we were silent. The passionate beauty that drenched those mountains seemed to enter into me, until I felt — I actually knew for moments at a time — that Beauty is a dimension of Reality. We can’t create Beauty — it is. We can let it enter into us — become one with it, part of it. And it changes the very substance of consciousness. But no miracle happened — not yet.
When daylight came, we said good-by to each other, and I left him to face my dilemma, which had to be met that morning. The descent of the mountain was a sort of via dolorosa. Instead of having found a solution, I felt more than ever baffled and unable to choose between two grim alternatives, but I tried to cling to the night’s experience. Though dread was almost physically sickening, I did at least remember the guru’s words; and though I could not, by any effort of will, recall the night’s mystical wonder, it had been real. I knew that, at any rate. But the morning’s contrast filled me with a kind of gray nostalgia as I approached the drab dâk bungalow, for a bath and a meal before facing the day’s unsolved problem.
I was met at the door by a man who was not supposed to meet me until noon. He was an Indian lawyer. I told him curtly that I would call on him and discuss the wretched business at the proper time in his office. He smiled. He produced an envelope. He said:
“But, sahib, I bring good news. Beauty, if you will forgive my humor, has decided that the Beast is after all a victim of his own too chivalrous emotion. These, sir, are your letters. There will be no lawsuit. Will you kindly give me a receipt?”
THE END
The Short Stories
Mundy left for New York City in June 1928 and moved in to the Master Apartments building, which rented its rooms to a large number of artists and writers. Mundy became involved in Nicholas Roerich’s museum, which was located in the building.
Master Apartments in 1929, around the time that Mundy took up residence there
LIST OF SHORT STORIES IN CHRONOLOGICAL ORDER
PAYABLE TO BEARER
HOOKUM HAI
FOR THE SALT HE HAD EATEN
MACHASSAN AH
FROM HELL, HULL, AND HALIFAX
OAKES RESPECTS AN ADVERSARY
THE SOUL OF A REGIMENT
THE PILLAR OF LIGHT
SAM BAGG OF THE GABRIEL GROUP
THE REAL RED ROOT
THE BELL ON HELL SHOAL
THE AVENGER
COMPANIONS IN ARMS
BURBETON AND ALI BEG
MAKING £10,000
THE LADY AND THE LORD
KITTY BURNS HER FINGERS
THE HERMIT AND THE TIGER
THE MAN FROM POONCH
MYSTIC INDIA SPEAKS
LIST OF SHORT STORIES IN ALPHABETICAL ORDER
BURBETON AND ALI BEG
COMPANIONS IN ARMS
FOR THE SALT HE HAD EATEN
FROM HELL, HULL, AND HALIFAX
HOOKUM HAI
KITTY BURNS HER FINGERS
MACHASSAN AH
MAKING £10,000
MYSTIC IND
IA SPEAKS
OAKES RESPECTS AN ADVERSARY
PAYABLE TO BEARER
SAM BAGG OF THE GABRIEL GROUP
THE AVENGER
THE BELL ON HELL SHOAL
THE HERMIT AND THE TIGER
THE LADY AND THE LORD
THE MAN FROM POONCH
THE PILLAR OF LIGHT
THE REAL RED ROOT
THE SOUL OF A REGIMENT
The Non-Fiction
Mundy, 1917
THE MIDDLE WAY
CONTENTS
JERUSALEM
ON KENNETH MORRIS
HISTORY
UNIVERSAL BROTHERHOOD
A NEMESIS
BROTHERHOOD OR LEAGUE?
UNSUNG AS YET
THE KING CAN DO NO WRONG
THE TURNING TIDE TWO RECENT BOOKS — A REVIEW
UNIVERSAL
“MOTHER NATURE” A REVIEW OF A BOOK BY WILLIAM J. LONG
MISCARRIAGE OF JUSTICE
THE LAMA’S LAW
SINCERITY
EASTERN PROVERB
HOPE
FATA VIRUMQUE CANO
BLACKMAIL
ANOTHER’S DUTY IS FULL OF DANGER
OYEZ!
I WILL AND I WILL NOT
CHANT
THE MAYA MYSTERY — YUCATAN
AN ANSWER TO CORRESPONDENTS
AS TO WRITING AND READING
AS TO SUCCESS AND FAILURE
A BEGINNER’S CONCEPT OF THEOSOPHY
AS TO CAPITAL PUNISHMENT
APOLOGY
I HAVE RISEN
SPIRITUAL MAN IS ETERNAL: THERE ARE NO DEAD!
HAIL AND FAREWELL!
THREE SIGNS OF THE TIMES KENNETH MORRIS — FLINDERS PETRIE — SPENGLER
JERUSALEM
THE MOSLEMS call Jerusalem El-Quds ‘The Holy’ not without justification. They hold it next in importance and sanctity after Mecca and Medina, while painfully aware that Christians and Jews give it first place in their imaginations, if not actually in their hearts. Moslems own most of the property, and practically all the historic sites; the mayor is a Moslem, and so are the majority of the Legislative Assembly; but the Governor of the city is an Englishman, and the High Commissioner of Palestine a Jew. The police are mostly Moslems, with a small army to support them composed mainly of Indian troops under British officers. And under the eyes of that nervous administration, meet, move, and quarrel, representatives of all this world’s fanaticisms.
The city is not visible from far-off, as one might think from studying the countless hymns and paeans in its praise. It stands about 3800 feet above sea-level. From the summit of the Mount of Olives one can view, like a turquoise framed in the yellow of the Mountains of Moab, the Dead Sea, 6000 feet lower and only twenty miles away. But the bald and rock-strewn Judaean Hills — with laden camels usually on the skyline — shut off the view in all other directions; so that even from the railway station there is nothing of the city visible but one corner of the medieval walls and a huge French convent.
However, romance begins from the moment the train leaves the plains at Ludd and begins to follow a spur-track into the limestone mountains. In the train are ‘Parthians, Medes, and Elamites’ — Jews from New York, Poland, and Bokhara; Abyssinians; Turkomans, Punjabis, Armenians, Egyptians, Englishmen, — representatives of nearly any nation and religion all the way from China to Peru — a Christian bishop, maybe, chin-by-jowl with a Moslem sheik. And there is always someone leaning from a window lecturing the rest, with plenty of material for his sermon.
They boast, and with sufficient truth, that every yard of those hills and gorges, among which the train toils noisily, has been fought over a thousand times. Not even Belgium has been such a battle-ground. They say the little red anemones, that grow wherever a pinch of dirt has settled in the crannies of the rocks, mark places where the dead fell fighting. And they point out dry stream-beds that “once ran blood for days.” No two tales are quite alike; they vary with the creed of the individual, and again with his political prejudices, which are almost as divergent. But all take pride in the fighting, and are in agreement as to that if nothing else.
There are no trees. Men cut those down to fight with; and amber-eyed, black goats, that look like swarms of insects in the distance, devour the new shoots. There are ruins everywhere — caverns for hunted men to hide in -sepulchers, long looted — pralaya plain to see.
And then Jerusalem, with her domed roofs golden in the sunset, and history underfoot. You drive from the station up a dusty road, across a score of battle-fields, between stones once set in place by Solomon (whoever he was), with walls on your right hand built by the crusaders and repaired by modern British troops.
The walls are magnificent and perfect; there are no such city-walls elsewhere. They stand for the most part on the first foundations. There are stones in them that have been torn down and replaced a dozen times, as army succeeding army sacked the place, and men inspired by undying zeal rebuilt. It is safe to say, the only time when Jerusalem was taken and not sacked was this last, when Allenby, after terrific fighting, walked in alone on foot, when an Arab servant had surrendered the city keys to a British cook with the rank of private. The British army set to work at once to spare and preserve; prisoners and destitutes were paid to remove dead donkeys and the rest of it from the moat and drains; the Order of the Bath was introduced; the city was washed; Solomon’s Pool, outside the walls, was cemented up and filled with water for the first time in centuries for the use of troops. The water-works left incomplete by Pontius Pilate were rediscovered and finished. Jerusalem still smells of everywhere and everything, but she is tolerable nowadays.
What strikes you first? Red heads. The boot-blacks at the Jafa Gate, who yell for your patronage, are blue-eyed, red-haired — almost certainly descendants of the Scots crusaders; Moslems all since Saladin prevailed, and recently Turk conscripts. There is no ill-will on that score. All concede that the Turk fought handsomely — all that is who fought against him and have lived beside him since. Islam, sword in hand, attends to business; having sheathed the sword, is tolerant. It is due to the humorously patient Turk that Christians in Jerusalem did not Kilkenny-cat themselves out of existence long ago.
Then, if it is night, and the modern meanness is invisible, all ancient history beckons. You pass by proud-looking Bedouins (some not too proud to beg, though wearing amber worth a farm or two) and plunge between laden camels into the dark throat of David Street, where the roofs nearly meet overhead, above rows of arches (now vegetable stalls) with open fronts, in which Knights Templar used to live. To right and left roofed passages, and darkness lit at intervals by feeble lamp-rays. Here and there the shadow of a Sikh on guard, silent, all-observing, mindful of his duty — and eleven rupees monthly, less deductions for his family in India. Greeks, Jews, Arabs, Levantines, brush by you, fitting less awkwardly by dark into the ancient molds. Then coffee-shops, where men in red tarboosh talk politics by candle light, and spies listen. Snatches of song in Arabic. Melancholy ‘cello-music, by a Jew from Chicago or somewhere. Explosive bursts of quarreling. Silence.
Narrower and narrower the street grows, until in places you can touch the walls with either hand. Through key-hole arches you can peer down dark courts and passage-ways, where the mystery reigns. A door opens; a man in Arab robes steps out; stands for a moment as if conscious of the picture; disappears. Beyond another opening a shadowy camel trudges round and round, grinding out semsem, blindfolded, and cursed by someone stridently whenever he pauses for a rest.
Then the walls, and the Haram-es-Shariff, where Omar’s Mosque stands; and the Dome of the Rock above the far-famed Rock of Abraham. They are lovelier by moonlight than the fame of Fars, and mounting the walls you can make the whole circuit of the city. Below lies the Valley of Jehoshaphat, glistening white with crowded tombs— “dry bones in the Valley of Death.” The Hospice on the Mount of Olives, now government headquarters, looms against the sky, and around it and about are silhouettes of
mosques, and churches, where once on a time the Assyrian, Babylonian, and Roman armies camped. From the walls you can see the place where Titus rode to reconnoitre, and came within an ace of being taken (which might have changed a deal of history).
On the other side, within a stone’s throw of the walls, is Golgotha, where four roads used to meet, and crucifixions were. Some say the place where they buried Jesus is within a hundred yards of that skull-shaped hill, and they are probably right if the account in the gospels is at all accurate. The moonlight emphasizes the resemblance to a skull, leaving hardly any doubt of the locality. But the Christian sects have chosen to adopt as authentic a site within the walls where neither execution nor burial can possibly have taken place; and there the sects fight and bicker, while a soldier stands on guard to keep them from bloodshed. He used to be a Turk, but is nowadays an Indian, or a stalwart from some plough-tail in the English shires.
Most sites within Jerusalem are doubtful, although all are labeled, and those possessed by Moslems have at least the merit of really ancient tradition and logical argument. The Christian claims all date from the crusades, when ‘proof’ was what a priest or a monk said, and ‘fragments of the true cross’ became almost a drug on the market.
It is indisputable, for instance, that an enormous and very ancient building once stood on the site of the Haram-es-Shariff; and it may have been Solomon’s Temple. The titanic, squared foundation-stones are there, and one wall is standing, to which go the orthodox Jews to mourn the departed glories of their race. No orthodox Jew will enter the courtyard surrounding the Dome of the Rock, for fear he might tread unwittingly an the spot (unknown now) where the Holy of Holies stood. And in any case, Jews are not welcome within the mosque, for the Moslems regard them as would-be usurpers.
Once, when Mohammed shaped his creed and welded Islam into one, he sought to attract the Jews by incorporating Jewish legend and the laws of Moses into the doctrine; but the Jews rejected all overtures, and ever since, although the Moslem has permitted synagogues, he has regarded the Jew as a hereditary enemy. He is forever suspicious of Jewish plans to regain possession of Jerusalem; the scorn and distrust are mutual, and there is not much love lost when Jew and Moslem meet.
