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03 - Nightmare Tales by Helena Petrovna Blavatsky · Nightmare Tales

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  Speaker 1: Section two of Nightmare Tales by Helena P. Blavatsky. This
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  Speaker 1: LibriVox recording is in the public domain. Read by Bin
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  Speaker 1: Tucker A Bewitched Life, Part two for a vision of horror.
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  Speaker 1: How strange? Where was I now? It was evident to
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  Speaker 1: me that I had once more returned to my senses,
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  Speaker 1: For there I was vividly realizing that I was rapidly
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  Speaker 1: moving forward, while experiencing a queer strange sensation, as though
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  Speaker 1: I were swimming without impulse or effort on my part,
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  Speaker 1: and in total darkness. The idea that first presented itself
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  Speaker 1: to me was that of a long subterranean passage of water,
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  Speaker 1: of earth, and of stifling air, though bodily I had
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  Speaker 1: no perception, no sensation of the presence or contact of
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  Speaker 1: any of these. I try to utter a few words
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  Speaker 1: to repeat my last sentence. I desire but one thing,
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  Speaker 1: to learn, the reason or reasons why my sister has
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  Speaker 1: so suddenly ceased writing to me. But the only words
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  Speaker 1: I heard out of the twenty one were the two
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  Speaker 1: to learn. And these, instead of their coming out of
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  Speaker 1: my own laryns, came back to me in my own voice,
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  Speaker 1: but entirely outside myself, near but not in me. In short,
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  Speaker 1: they were pronounced by my voice, not by my lips.
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  Speaker 1: One more rapid involuntary motion, one more plunge into the
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  Speaker 1: Sumerian darkness of a to me unknown element, and I
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  Speaker 1: saw myself standing, actually standing underground, as it seemed, I
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  Speaker 1: was compactly and thickly surrounded on all sides above and below,
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  Speaker 1: right and left with earth and in the mold. And
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  Speaker 1: yet it weighed not and seemed quite immaterial and transparent
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  Speaker 1: to my senses. I did not realize for one second
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  Speaker 1: the utter absurdity, nay I possibility of that seeming fact.
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  Speaker 1: One second more, one short instant, and I perceived, oh,
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  Speaker 1: inexpressible horror when I think of it now. For then,
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  Speaker 1: although I perceived, realized, and recorded facts and events far
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  Speaker 1: more clearly than ever I had done before, I did
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  Speaker 1: not seem to be touched in any other way by
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  Speaker 1: what I saw. Yes, I perceived a coffin at my feet.
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  Speaker 1: It was a plain, unpretentious shell made of deal, the
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  Speaker 1: last couch of the pauper, and which, notwithstanding its closed lid,
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  Speaker 1: I plainly saw a hideous, grinning skull, a man's skeleton,
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  Speaker 1: mutilated and broken in many of its parts, as though
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  Speaker 1: it had been taken out of some hidden chamber of
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  Speaker 1: the defunct inquisition, where it had been subjected to torture.
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  Speaker 1: Who can it be? I thought? At this moment I
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  Speaker 1: heard again, proceeding from afar, the same voice, my voice,
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  Speaker 1: the reason or reasons why? It said, as though these
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  Speaker 1: words were the unbroken continuation of the same sentence of
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  Speaker 1: which it had just repeated the two words to learn.
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  Speaker 1: It sounded near, and yet as from some incalculable distance,
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  Speaker 1: giving me then the idea that the long subterranean journey
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  Speaker 1: the subsequent mental reflections and discoveries had occupied no time
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  Speaker 1: had been performed during the short, almost instantaneous interval between
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  Speaker 1: the first and the middle words of the sentence begone
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  Speaker 1: at any rate, if not actually pronounced by myself in
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  Speaker 1: the room at Kioto, and which it was now finishing
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  Speaker 1: in interrupted broken phrases, like a faithful echo of my
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  Speaker 1: own words and voice. Forthwith, the hideous mingled remains began
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  Speaker 1: assuming a form and to me but too familiar appearance.
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  Speaker 1: The broken parts joined together one to the other. The
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  Speaker 1: bones became covered once more with flesh, and I recognized
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  Speaker 1: in these disfigured remains with some surprise, but not a
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  Speaker 1: trace of feeling at the sight my sister's dead husband,
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  Speaker 1: my own brother in law, whom I had, for her sake,
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  Speaker 1: loved so truly. How was it? How did he come
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  Speaker 1: to die such a terrible death? I asked myself to
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  Speaker 1: put one's self a query seemed in the state in
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  Speaker 1: which I was to instantly solve it. Hardly had I
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  Speaker 1: asked myself the question, when, as if in a panorama,
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  Speaker 1: I saw the retrospective picture of poor Karl's death in
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  Speaker 1: all its horrid vividness, and with every thrilling detail, every
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  Speaker 1: one of which, however, left me then entirely and brutally indifferent.
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  Speaker 1: Here he is the dear old fellow, full of life
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  Speaker 1: and joy at the prospect of more lucrative employment from
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  Speaker 1: his principle examining and trying in a wood sawing fact
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  Speaker 1: ory a monsters steam engine just arrived from America. He
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  Speaker 1: bends over to examine more closely an inner arrangement to
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  Speaker 1: tighten a screw. His clothes are caught by the teeth
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  Speaker 1: of the revolving wheel in full motion, and suddenly he
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  Speaker 1: is dragged down, doubled up, and his limbs half severed,
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  Speaker 1: torn off before the workmen, unacquainted with the mechanism can
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  Speaker 1: stop it, he is taken out, or what remains of
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  Speaker 1: him dead, mangled a thing of horror, an unrecognizable mass
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  Speaker 1: of palpitating flesh and blood. I follow the remains, wheeled
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  Speaker 1: as an unrecognizable heap to the hospital. Hear the brutally
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  Speaker 1: given order that the messengers of death should stop on
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  Speaker 1: their way at the house of the widow and orphans.
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  Speaker 1: I follow them and find the unconscious family quietly assembled together.
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  Speaker 1: I see my sister, the deer and beloved, and remain
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  Speaker 1: indifferent at the sight, only feeling highly interested in the
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  Speaker 1: coming scene. My heart, my feelings, even my personality seem
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  Speaker 1: to have disappeared, to have been left behind to belong
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  Speaker 1: to somebody else. There I stand and witness her unprepared
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  Speaker 1: reception of the ghastly news. I realize clearly, without one
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  Speaker 1: moment's hesitation or mistake, the effect of the shock upon her.
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  Speaker 1: I perceive clearly, following and recording to the minutest detail
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  Speaker 1: her sensations and the inner process that takes place in her.
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  Speaker 1: I watch and remember, missing not one single point. As
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  Speaker 1: the corpse is brought into the house for identification, I
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  Speaker 1: hear the long, agonizing cry, my own name pronounced, and
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  Speaker 1: that dull thud of the living body falling upon the
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  Speaker 1: remains of the dead one. I follow with curiosity the
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  Speaker 1: sudden thrill and the instantaneous perturbation in her brain that
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  Speaker 1: follow it, and watch with attention the worm like precipitate,
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  Speaker 1: an immensely intensified emotion of the tubular fibers, the instantaneous
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  Speaker 1: change of color in the cephalic extremity of the nervous system,
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  Speaker 1: the fibrous nervous matter passing from white to bright red
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  Speaker 1: and then to a dark red, bluish hue. I notice
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  Speaker 1: the sudden flask of a phosphorus like brilliant radiance, its
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  Speaker 1: trimmer in its sudden extinction, followed by darkness, complete darkness
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  Speaker 1: in the region of memory, as the radiance, comparable in
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  Speaker 1: its form only to a human shape, oozes out suddenly
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  Speaker 1: from the top of the head, expands, loses its form,
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  Speaker 1: and scatters. And I say to myself, this is insanity,
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  Speaker 1: life long, incurable insanity, for the principle of intelligence is
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  Speaker 1: not paralyzed or extinguished temporarily, but has just deserted. The tabernacle,
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  Speaker 1: forever ejected from it by the terrible force of the
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  Speaker 1: sudden blow, the link between the animal and the divine
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  Speaker 1: essence is broken. And as the unfamiliar term divine is
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  Speaker 1: mentally uttered, my thought laughs. Suddenly I hear again my
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  Speaker 1: far off yet near voice, pronouncing emphatically and close by me,
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  Speaker 1: the words why my sister had so suddenly ceased writing?
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  Speaker 1: And before the two final words to me have completed
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  Speaker 1: the sentence, I see a long series of sad events
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  Speaker 1: immediately following the catastrophe. I behold the mother, now a helpless,
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  Speaker 1: groveling idiot in the lunatic asylum attached to the city hospital,
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  Speaker 1: the seven younger children admitted into a refuge for paupers. Finally,
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  Speaker 1: I see the two elder a boy of fifteen, and
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  Speaker 1: a girl a year younger, my favorites, both taken by
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  Speaker 1: strangers into their service. A captain of a sailing vessel
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  Speaker 1: carries away my nephew. An old jewess adopts the tender girl.
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  Speaker 1: I see the events with all their horrors and thrilling details,
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  Speaker 1: and record each to the small all as detail with
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  Speaker 1: the utmost coolness. For Mark well, when I use such
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  Speaker 1: expressions as horrors, et cetera, they are to be understood
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  Speaker 1: as an afterthought. During the whole time of the events described,
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  Speaker 1: I experienced no sensation of either pain or pity. My
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  Speaker 1: feelings seemed to be paralyzed, as well as my external senses.
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  Speaker 1: It was only after coming back that I realized my
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  Speaker 1: irretrievable losses to their full extent, much of that which
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  Speaker 1: I had so vehemently denied in those days owing to
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  Speaker 1: sad personal experience. I have to admit now, had I
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  Speaker 1: been told by anyone at that time that man could
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  Speaker 1: act and think and feel irrespective of his brain and senses, Nay,
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  Speaker 1: that by some mysterious and to this day for me
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  Speaker 1: incomprehensible power, he could be transported mentally thousands of miles
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  Speaker 1: away from his body. There too, fitness not only present
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  Speaker 1: but also past events, and remember these by storing them
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  Speaker 1: in his memory. I would have proclaimed that man a madman.
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  Speaker 1: Alas I can do so no longer, for I have
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  Speaker 1: become myself that madman. Ten twenty forty A hundred times
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  Speaker 1: during the course of this wretched life of mine have
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  Speaker 1: I experienced and lived over such moments of existence outside
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  Speaker 1: of my body. A cursed be that hour when this
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  Speaker 1: terrible power was first awakened in me. I have not
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  Speaker 1: even the consolation left of attributing such glimpses of events
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  Speaker 1: at a distance to insanity. Madmen rave and see that
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  Speaker 1: which exists not in the realm they belonged to. My
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  Speaker 1: visions have proved invariably correct, but to my narrative of woe.
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  Speaker 1: I had hardly had time to see my unfortunate young
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  Speaker 1: niece in her new Israelitish home when I felt a
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  Speaker 1: shock of the same nature as the one that had
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  Speaker 1: sent me swimming through the bowels of the earth. As
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  Speaker 1: I had thought, I opened my eyes in my own room,
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  Speaker 1: and the first thing I fixed upon, by accident was
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  Speaker 1: the clock. The hands of the dial showed seven minutes
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  Speaker 1: and a half past five. I thus passed through those
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  Speaker 1: most terrible experiences which it takes me hours to narrate,
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  Speaker 1: in precisely half a minute of time. But this too
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  Speaker 1: was an afterthought. For one brief instant, I recollected nothing
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  Speaker 1: of what I had seen. The interval between the time
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  Speaker 1: I had glanced at the clock when taking the mirror
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  Speaker 1: from the Yamaboushie's hand and the second glance seemed to
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  Speaker 1: me merged into one. I was just opening my lips
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  Speaker 1: to hurry on the Yamaboushi with his experiment, when the
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  Speaker 1: full remembrance of what I had just seen flashed lightning
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  Speaker 1: like into my brain, uttering a cry of horror and despair.
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  Speaker 1: I felt as though the whole creation were crushing me
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  Speaker 1: under its weight. For one moment, I remained speechless the
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  Speaker 1: picture of human ruin amid a world of death and desolation.
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  Speaker 1: My heart sank down in anguish. My doom was closed,
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  Speaker 1: and a hopeless gloom seemed to settle over the rest
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  Speaker 1: of my life forever five return of doubts. Then came
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  Speaker 1: a reaction as sudden as my grief itself. A doubt
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  Speaker 1: arose in my mind, which forthwith grew into a fierce
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  Speaker 1: desire of denying the truth of what I had seen,
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  Speaker 1: a stubborn resolution of treating the whole thing as an empty,
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  Speaker 1: meaningless dream. The effect of my overstrained mind took possession
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  Speaker 1: of me. Yes, it was but a lying vision, an
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  Speaker 1: idiotic cheating of my own senses, suggesting pictures of death
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  Speaker 1: and misery which had been evoked by weeks of incertitude
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  Speaker 1: and mental depression. How could I see all that that
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  Speaker 1: I have seen in less than half a minute, I
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  Speaker 1: exclaimed the theory of dreams, the rapidity with which the
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  Speaker 1: material changes on which our ideas and vision depend are
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  Speaker 1: excited in the hemispherical ganglia, is sufficient to account for
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  Speaker 1: the long series of events I have seemed to experience
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  Speaker 1: and dream alone. Can the relations of space and time
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  Speaker 1: be so completely annihilated? The Yamabushi is for nothing in
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  Speaker 1: this disagreeable nightmare. He is only reaping that which has
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  Speaker 1: been sown by myself, and by using some infernal drug
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  Speaker 1: of which his tribe of the secret, he has contrived
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  Speaker 1: to make me lose consciousness for a few seconds and
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  Speaker 1: see that vision as lying as it is horrid of
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  Speaker 1: aunt all such thoughts, I believe them not. In a
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  Speaker 1: few days there will be a steamer sailing for Europe.
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  Speaker 1: I shall leave tomorrow. This disjointed monolog was pronounced by
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  Speaker 1: me aloud, regardless of the presence of my respected friend,
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  Speaker 1: the bonds to Mura and the Yamabushi. The latter was
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  Speaker 1: standing before me in the same position as when he
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  Speaker 1: placed the mirror in my hands, and kept looking at
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  Speaker 1: me calmly, I should perhaps say, looking through me, and
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  Speaker 1: in dignified silence. The Bonds, whose kind countenance was beaming
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  Speaker 1: with sympathy, approached me as he would a sick child,
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  Speaker 1: and gently laying his hand on mine, and with tears
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  Speaker 1: in his eyes, said, friend, you must not leave this
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  Speaker 1: city before you have been completely purified of your contact
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  Speaker 1: with the lower dae jinns, spirits who had to be
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  Speaker 1: used to guide your inexperienced soul to the places it
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  Speaker 1: craved to see. The entrance to your inner self must
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  Speaker 1: be closed against their dangerous intrusion. Lose no time, therefore,
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  Speaker 1: my son, and allow the Holy Master Yonder to purify
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  Speaker 1: you at once. But nothing can be more deaf than anger.
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  Speaker 1: Once aroused, the sap of reason could no longer quench
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  Speaker 1: the fire of passion. And at that moment I was
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  Speaker 1: not fit to listen to his friendly voice. His is
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  Speaker 1: a face I can never recall to my memory without
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  Speaker 1: genuine feeling. His a name I will ever pronounce with
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  Speaker 1: a sigh of emotion. But at that ever memorial hour,
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  Speaker 1: when my passions were inflamed to white heat, I felt
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  Speaker 1: almost a hatred for the kind, good old man. I
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  Speaker 1: could not forgive him his interference in the present event.
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  Speaker 1: Hence for all answer therefore he received from me, a
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  Speaker 1: stern rebuke, a violent protest on my part against the
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  Speaker 1: idea that I could ever regard the vision I had
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  Speaker 1: had in any other light save that of an empty dream,
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  Speaker 1: and as Yamabushi as anything better than an impostor. I
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  Speaker 1: will leave tomorrow. Had I to forfeit my whole fortune
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  Speaker 1: as a penalty, I exclaimed, pale with rage and despair.
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  Speaker 1: You will repent it the whole of your life if
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  Speaker 1: you do so before the Holy Man has shut every
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  Speaker 1: entrance in you against intruders. Ever on the watch and
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  Speaker 1: ready to enter the open door, was the answer. The
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  Speaker 1: daid Djinns will have the best of you, I interrupted
• 15:57
  Speaker 1: him with a brutal laugh and a still more brutal
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  Speaker 1: phrased inquiry about the fees I was expecting to give
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  Speaker 1: the Yamabushi for his experiment with me. He needs no reward,
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  Speaker 1: was the reply. The order he belongs to is the
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  Speaker 1: richest in the world, since its adherents need nothing, for
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  Speaker 1: they are above all terrestrial and venal desires. Insult him.
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  Speaker 1: Not the good man who came to help you out
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  Speaker 1: of pure sympathy for your suffering and to relieve you
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  Speaker 1: of mental agony. But I would listen to no words
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  Speaker 1: of reason and wisdom. The spirit of rebellion and pride
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  Speaker 1: had taken possession of me and made me disregard every
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  Speaker 1: feeling of personal friendship or even of simple propriety. Lucky
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  Speaker 1: for me, On turning round to order the medicant monk
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  Speaker 1: out of my presence, I found he had gone. I
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  Speaker 1: had not seen him move, and attributed his stealthy departure
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  Speaker 1: to fear at having been detected and understood fool, blind,
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  Speaker 1: conceited idiot that I was. Why did I fail to
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  Speaker 1: reckonize the Yamabushi's power and that the peace of my
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  Speaker 1: whole life was departing with him from that moment for ever?
• 17:08
  Speaker 1: But I did so fail. Even the fell demon of
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  Speaker 1: my long fears uncertainty, was now entirely overpowered by that
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  Speaker 1: fiend skepticism, the silliest of all, A dull, morbid unbelief,
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  Speaker 1: a stubborn denial of the evidence of my own senses,
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  Speaker 1: and a determined will to regard the whole vision as
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  Speaker 1: a fancy of my overwrought mind had taken firm hold
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  Speaker 1: of me. My mind, I argued, what is it shall
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  Speaker 1: I believe? With the superstitious and the weak, that this
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  Speaker 1: production of phosphorus and gray matter is indeed the superior
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  Speaker 1: part of me, that it can act and see independently
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  Speaker 1: of my physical senses. Never as well believe in the
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  Speaker 1: planetary intelligences of the astrologer, as in the dijer zins
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  Speaker 1: of my credulous though well meaning friend the priest, as
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  Speaker 1: well confess one's belief in Jupiter and Saul, Saturn and Mercury,
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  Speaker 1: and that these worthies guide their spheres and concerned themselves
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  Speaker 1: as mortals. As to give one serious thought to the
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  Speaker 1: airy nonentities supposed to have guided my soul in its
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  Speaker 1: unpleasant dream, I loathe and laugh at the absurd idea
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  Speaker 1: I regarded as a personal insult to the intellect and
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  Speaker 1: rational reasoning powers of a man to speak of invisible creatures,
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  Speaker 1: subjective intelligences, and all that kind of insane superstition. In short,
• 18:34
  Speaker 1: I begged my friend the Bonds to spare me his
• 18:36
  Speaker 1: protests and thus the unpleasantness of breaking with him forever.
• 18:40
  Speaker 1: Thus I raved and argued before the venerable Japanese gentlemen,
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  Speaker 1: doing all in my power to leave on his mind
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  Speaker 1: the indelible conviction of my having gone suddenly mad. But
• 18:52
  Speaker 1: his admirable forbearance proved more than equal to my idiotic passion,
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  Speaker 1: and he implored me once more, for the sake of
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  Speaker 1: my whole future, to submit to certain necessary purificatory rites.
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  Speaker 1: Never far rather dwell and air rarefied to nothing by
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  Speaker 1: the air pomp of wholesome unbelief than in the dim
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  Speaker 1: fog of silly superstition, I argued, paraphrasing Richter's remark. I
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  Speaker 1: will not believe, I repeated, But as I can no
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  Speaker 1: longer bear such uncertainty about my sister and her family,
• 19:26
  Speaker 1: I will return by the first steamer to Europe. This
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  Speaker 1: final determination upset my old acquaintance altogether. His earnest prayer
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  Speaker 1: not to depart before I had seen the Yamabushi once
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  Speaker 1: more receive no attention from me, friend of a foreign land,
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  Speaker 1: he cried, I pray that you may not repent of
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  Speaker 1: your unbelief and rashness. May the Holy One Kwanan, the
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  Speaker 1: Goddess of mercy, protect you from the zinns, For since
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  Speaker 1: you refuse to submit to the process of purification at
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  Speaker 1: the hands of the Holy Yamabushi, he is powerless to
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  Speaker 1: defend you from the evil influences evoked by your unbelief
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  Speaker 1: and defiance of truth. But let me, at this parting hour,
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  Speaker 1: I beseech you, Let me an older gentleman who wishes
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  Speaker 1: you well, warn you once more and persuade you of
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  Speaker 1: things you are still ignorant of. May I speak, Go
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  Speaker 1: on and have your say. Was the ungracious assent. But
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  Speaker 1: let me warn you in my turn that nothing you
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  Speaker 1: can say can make of me a believer in your
• 20:26
  Speaker 1: disgraceful superstentions. This was added with a cruel feeling of
• 20:31
  Speaker 1: pleasure and bestowing one more needless insult. But the excellent
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  Speaker 1: man disregarded this new sneer as he had all others.
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  Speaker 1: Never shall I forget the solemn, earnestness of his parting words,
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  Speaker 1: the pitying, remorseful look on his face when he found
• 20:48
  Speaker 1: that it was indeed all to no purpose, that by
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  Speaker 1: his kindly meant interference, he had only led me to
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  Speaker 1: my destruction. Lend me your ear, good sir, for the
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  Speaker 1: last time, he began. Learn that unless the holy and
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  Speaker 1: venerable man who to relieve your distress opened your sole vision,
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  Speaker 1: is permitted to complete his work, your future life will
• 21:11
  Speaker 1: indeed be little worth living. He has to safeguard you
• 21:15
  Speaker 1: against involuntary repetitions of visions of the same character. Unless
• 21:20
  Speaker 1: you consent to it of your own free will. However,
• 21:23
  Speaker 1: you will have to be left in the power of
• 21:25
  Speaker 1: forces which will harass and persecute you to the verge
• 21:29
  Speaker 1: of insanity. Know that the development of long vision or clairvoyance,
• 21:34
  Speaker 1: which is accomplished at will only by those for whom
• 21:38
  Speaker 1: the Mother of Mercy, the Great quan An has no secrets,
• 21:42
  Speaker 1: must in the case of the beginner, be pursued with
• 21:45
  Speaker 1: the help of the Heer Djenn's elemental spirits, whose nature
• 21:49
  Speaker 1: is soulless and hence wicked. Know also that while the
• 21:53
  Speaker 1: arahat the destroyer of the enemy, who has subjected and
• 21:57
  Speaker 1: made of these creatures his servants, has nothing to he
• 22:00
  Speaker 1: who has no power over them, becomes their slave. Nay,
• 22:04
  Speaker 1: laugh not in your great pride and ignorance, but listen further.
• 22:08
  Speaker 1: During the time of the vision, and while the inner
• 22:10
  Speaker 1: perceptions are directed toward the events they seek, the dye
• 22:14
  Speaker 1: Jinns have the seer, when, like yourself, he is an
• 22:17
  Speaker 1: inexperienced tyro, entirely in its power, and for the time
• 22:22
  Speaker 1: being that seer is no longer himself. He partakes of
• 22:27
  Speaker 1: the nature of his guide, the dyge gin, which directs
• 22:30
  Speaker 1: his inner sight, keeps his sole endurance vile making of him.
• 22:36
  Speaker 1: While the state lasts a creature like itself, bereft of
• 22:39
  Speaker 1: his divine light. Man is but a soulless being. Hence,
• 22:44
  Speaker 1: during the time of such connection he will feel no
• 22:46
  Speaker 1: human emotions, neither pity nor fear, love nor mercy. Hold,
• 22:52
  Speaker 1: I involuntarily exclaimed, as the words vividly brought back to
• 22:56
  Speaker 1: my recollection the indifference with which I had witnessed my
• 22:59
  Speaker 1: sister's despair and sudden loss of reason in my hallucination. Hold.
• 23:04
  Speaker 1: But no, it is still worse madness in me to
• 23:07
  Speaker 1: heed or find any sense in your ridiculous tale. But
• 23:10
  Speaker 1: if you knew it to be so dangerous, why have
• 23:13
  Speaker 1: advised the experiment at all? I added mockingly. It had
• 23:18
  Speaker 1: to last but a few seconds, and no evil could
• 23:20
  Speaker 1: have resulted from it, had you kept your promise to
• 23:23
  Speaker 1: submit to purification. Was the sad and humble reply. I
• 23:27
  Speaker 1: wish you well, my friend, and my heart was nigh
• 23:30
  Speaker 1: breaking to see you suffering day by day. The experiment
• 23:33
  Speaker 1: is harmless when directed by one who knows, and becomes
• 23:37
  Speaker 1: dangerous only when the final precaution is neglected. It is
• 23:41
  Speaker 1: the Master of Visions, he who has opened an entrance
• 23:44
  Speaker 1: into your soul, who has to close it by using
• 23:47
  Speaker 1: the seal of purification against any further and deliberate ingress
• 23:51
  Speaker 1: of the Master of Visions. Forsooth, I cried, brutally, interrupting him,
• 23:56
  Speaker 1: say rather, the Master of imposture. The look of sorrow
• 24:00
  Speaker 1: on his kind old face was so intense and painful
• 24:03
  Speaker 1: to behold that I perceived I had gone too far.
• 24:06
  Speaker 1: But it was too late. Farewell, then, said the old Bonds, rising,
• 24:12
  Speaker 1: and after performing the usual ceremonies of politeness, Tamra left
• 24:16
  Speaker 1: the house in dignified silence. Six I depart, but not alone.
• 24:24
  Speaker 1: Several days later I sailed, But during my stay I
• 24:27
  Speaker 1: saw my venerable friend, the Bonds, no more evidently on
• 24:30
  Speaker 1: that last and to me for ever memorable evening, he
• 24:34
  Speaker 1: had been seriously offended with my more than irreverent, my
• 24:38
  Speaker 1: downright insulting remark about one whom he so justly respected.
• 24:44
  Speaker 1: I felt sorry for him, but the weal of passion
• 24:46
  Speaker 1: and pride was too incessantly at work to permit me
• 24:49
  Speaker 1: to feel a single moment of remorse? What was it
• 24:53
  Speaker 1: that made me so relish the pleasure of wrath that,
• 24:55
  Speaker 1: when for one instant I happened to lose sight of
• 24:58
  Speaker 1: my supposed grievance toward the Yamaboo, she I forthwith lashed
• 25:01
  Speaker 1: myself back into a kind of artificial fury against him.
• 25:05
  Speaker 1: He had only accomplished what he had been expected to do,
• 25:08
  Speaker 1: and what he had tacitly promised. Not only so, but
• 25:12
  Speaker 1: it was I myself who had deprived him of the
• 25:14
  Speaker 1: possibility of doing more, even from my own protection, if
• 25:18
  Speaker 1: I might believe the bonds a man whom I knew
• 25:20
  Speaker 1: to be thoroughly honorable and reliable. Was it regret at
• 25:25
  Speaker 1: having been forced by my pride to refuse the proffered precaution?
• 25:30
  Speaker 1: Or was it the fear of remorse that made me
• 25:32
  Speaker 1: rake together in my heart during those evil hours the
• 25:35
  Speaker 1: smallest details of the supposed insult to that same suicidal pride. Remorse,
• 25:42
  Speaker 1: as an old poet has aptly remarked, is like the
• 25:45
  Speaker 1: heart in which it grows. If proud and gloomy, it
• 25:49
  Speaker 1: is a poison tree that pierced to the utmost weeps
• 25:52
  Speaker 1: only tears of blood. Perchance, it was the indefinite fear
• 25:56
  Speaker 1: of something of that sort which caused me to remain
• 25:59
  Speaker 1: so obdurate, and led me to excuse under the plea
• 26:02
  Speaker 1: of terrible provocation, even the unprovoked insults that I had
• 26:06
  Speaker 1: heaped upon the head of my kind and all forgiving
• 26:08
  Speaker 1: friend the Priest. However, it was now too late in
• 26:11
  Speaker 1: the day to recall the words of offense I had uttered,
• 26:14
  Speaker 1: and all I could do was to promise myself the
• 26:16
  Speaker 1: satisfaction of writing him a friendly letter as soon as
• 26:20
  Speaker 1: I reached home. Fool blind, fool, elated with insolent self
• 26:25
  Speaker 1: conceit that I was so sure did I feel that
• 26:29
  Speaker 1: my vision was due merely to some trick of the yamabushi,
• 26:32
  Speaker 1: that I actually gloated over my coming triumph in writing
• 26:35
  Speaker 1: to the bonds that I had been writ in answering
• 26:38
  Speaker 1: his sad words of parting with an incredulous smile, as
• 26:41
  Speaker 1: my sister and family were all in good health, happy.
• 26:45
  Speaker 1: I had not been at sea for a week before
• 26:47
  Speaker 1: I had cause to remember his words of warning. From
• 26:50
  Speaker 1: the day of my experience with the magic mirror, I
• 26:53
  Speaker 1: perceived a great change in my whole state, and I
• 26:56
  Speaker 1: attributed it at first to the mental depression I had
• 26:59
  Speaker 1: struggled against for so many months. During the day, I
• 27:02
  Speaker 1: very often found myself absent from the surrounding scenes, losing
• 27:06
  Speaker 1: sight for several minutes of things and persons. My nights
• 27:10
  Speaker 1: were disturbed, my dreams oppressive and at times horrible. Good
• 27:15
  Speaker 1: sailor I certainly was, And besides, the weather was unusually fine,
• 27:19
  Speaker 1: the ocean as smooth as a pond. Notwithstanding this, I
• 27:22
  Speaker 1: often felt a strange giddiness, and the familiar faces of
• 27:26
  Speaker 1: my fellow passengers assumed at such times the most grotesque appearances. Thus,
• 27:31
  Speaker 1: a young German I used to know well was once
• 27:34
  Speaker 1: suddenly transformed before my eyes into his old father, whom
• 27:38
  Speaker 1: we had laid in the little burial place of the
• 27:40
  Speaker 1: European Colony some three years before. We were talking on
• 27:44
  Speaker 1: deck of the defunct and of a certain business arrangement
• 27:47
  Speaker 1: of his when Max Gruner's head appeared to me as
• 27:50
  Speaker 1: though it were covered with a strange film. A thick
• 27:54
  Speaker 1: grayish mist surrounded him, and gradually condensing around and upon
• 27:58
  Speaker 1: his healthy countenance. So suddenly into the grim old head
• 28:01
  Speaker 1: I had myself seen covered with six feet of soil
• 28:05
  Speaker 1: on another occasion, as the captain was talking of a
• 28:08
  Speaker 1: melee thief whom he had helped to secure and lodge
• 28:11
  Speaker 1: in jail, I saw near him the yellow, villainous face
• 28:14
  Speaker 1: of a man answering to his description. I kept silent
• 28:17
  Speaker 1: about such hallucinations, but as they became more and more frequent,
• 28:21
  Speaker 1: I felt very much disturbed, though still attributing them to
• 28:24
  Speaker 1: natural causes, such as I had read about in medical books.
• 28:29
  Speaker 1: One night, I was abruptly awakened by a long and
• 28:31
  Speaker 1: loud cry of distress. It was a woman's voice, plaintive,
• 28:36
  Speaker 1: like that of a child, full of terror and of
• 28:38
  Speaker 1: helpless despair. I awoke with a start to find myself
• 28:42
  Speaker 1: on land in a strange room. A young girl, almost
• 28:45
  Speaker 1: a child, was desperately struggling against a powerful middle aged
• 28:49
  Speaker 1: man who had surprised her in her own room and
• 28:51
  Speaker 1: during her sleep. Behind the closed and locked door, I
• 28:55
  Speaker 1: saw listening an old woman, whose face, notwithstanding the fiendish
• 28:58
  Speaker 1: expression upon it, seemed familiar to me, and I immediately
• 29:02
  Speaker 1: recognized it. It was the face of the jewess who
• 29:05
  Speaker 1: had adopted my niece in the dream I had had
• 29:07
  Speaker 1: at Kioto. She had received gold to pay for her
• 29:11
  Speaker 1: share in the foul crime and was now keeping her
• 29:13
  Speaker 1: part of the covenant. But who was the victim? Oh horror, unutterable,
• 29:20
  Speaker 1: unspeakable horror. When I realized the situation after coming back
• 29:24
  Speaker 1: to my normal state, I found it was my own child, niece.
• 29:28
  Speaker 1: But as in my first vision, I felt in me
• 29:31
  Speaker 1: nothing of the nature of that despair born of affection
• 29:34
  Speaker 1: that fills one's heart at the sight of a wrong
• 29:37
  Speaker 1: done to or a misfortune befalling those one loves, Nothing
• 29:42
  Speaker 1: but a manly indignation in the presence of suffering inflicted
• 29:46
  Speaker 1: upon the weak and the helpless. I rushed, of course,
• 29:48
  Speaker 1: to her rescue and seized the wanton, brutal beast by
• 29:52
  Speaker 1: the neck. I fastened upon him with powerful grasp, but
• 29:56
  Speaker 1: the man heeded it not. He seemed not even to
• 29:58
  Speaker 1: feel my hand. The coward, seeing himself resisted by the girl,
• 30:03
  Speaker 1: lifted his powerful arm, and the thick fist, coming down
• 30:07
  Speaker 1: like a heavy hammer upon the sunny locks, fell the
• 30:10
  Speaker 1: child to the ground. It was with a loud cry
• 30:13
  Speaker 1: of the indignation of a stranger, not with that of
• 30:16
  Speaker 1: a tigress defending her cub that I sprang upon the
• 30:18
  Speaker 1: lewde beast and sought to throttle him. I then remarked
• 30:21
  Speaker 1: for the first time that a shadow myself I was grasping,
• 30:26
  Speaker 1: but another shadow. My loud shrieks and imprecations, had awakened
• 30:31
  Speaker 1: the whole steamer. They were attributed to a nightmare. I
• 30:34
  Speaker 1: did not seek to take any one into my confidence,
• 30:37
  Speaker 1: but from that day forward my life became a long
• 30:39
  Speaker 1: series of mental tortures. I could hardly shut my eyes
• 30:44
  Speaker 1: without becoming witness of some horrible deed, some scene of misery, death,
• 30:48
  Speaker 1: or crime, whether past, present or even future. As I
• 30:52
  Speaker 1: ascertained later on, it was as though some mocking fiend
• 30:55
  Speaker 1: had taken upon himself the task of making me go
• 30:58
  Speaker 1: through the vision of everything that was beast, malignant, and
• 31:01
  Speaker 1: hopeless in this world of misery. No radiant vision of
• 31:05
  Speaker 1: beauty or virtue ever lit with the faintest ray. These
• 31:07
  Speaker 1: pictures of awe and wretchedness that I seemed doomed to witness,
• 31:12
  Speaker 1: scenes of wickedness, of murder, of treachery, and of lust,
• 31:16
  Speaker 1: fell dismally upon my sight, and I was brought face
• 31:18
  Speaker 1: to face with the vilest results of man's passions, the
• 31:22
  Speaker 1: most terrible outcome of his material earthly cravings at the
• 31:27
  Speaker 1: Bonds foreseen. Indeed the dreary results. When he spoke of
• 31:31
  Speaker 1: die Gins, to whom I left an ingress, a door
• 31:34
  Speaker 1: opened to me. Nonsense. There must be some physiological abnormal
• 31:40
  Speaker 1: change in me. Once at Nuremberg, when I have ascertained
• 31:44
  Speaker 1: how false was the direction taken by my fears, I
• 31:47
  Speaker 1: dared not hope for no misfortune at all. These meaningless
• 31:50
  Speaker 1: visions will disappear as they came. The very fact that
• 31:53
  Speaker 1: my fancy follows but one direction, that of pictures of misery,
• 31:57
  Speaker 1: of human passions in their wars. First material shape is
• 32:02
  Speaker 1: a proof to me of their unreality. If, as you say,
• 32:07
  Speaker 1: man consists of one substance, matter, the object of the
• 32:11
  Speaker 1: physical senses, and if perception with its modes is only
• 32:14
  Speaker 1: the result of the organization of the brain, then should
• 32:18
  Speaker 1: we be naturally attracted But to the material, the earthly,
• 32:22
  Speaker 1: I thought. I heard the familiar voice of the Bonds,
• 32:24
  Speaker 1: interrupting my reflections and repeating an often used argument of
• 32:28
  Speaker 1: his and his discussions with me. There are two planes
• 32:31
  Speaker 1: of visions before men, I again heard him say, the
• 32:35
  Speaker 1: plane of undying love and spiritual aspirations, the afflux from
• 32:40
  Speaker 1: the eternal light and the plane of restless, ever changing matter,
• 32:44
  Speaker 1: the light in which the misguided dieje Jinn's bathe seven
• 32:51
  Speaker 1: eternity in a short dream. In those days, I could
• 32:55
  Speaker 1: hardly bring myself to realize, even for a moment, the
• 32:58
  Speaker 1: absurdity of a belief in an any kind of spirits,
• 33:00
  Speaker 1: whether good or bad. I now understood if I did
• 33:04
  Speaker 1: not believe what was meant by the term, though I
• 33:07
  Speaker 1: still persisted in hoping that it would finally prove some
• 33:10
  Speaker 1: physical derangement or nervous hallucination to fortify my unbelief. The
• 33:16
  Speaker 1: more I tried to bring back to my memory all
• 33:18
  Speaker 1: the arguments used against faith in such superstitions that I
• 33:22
  Speaker 1: had ever read or heard. I recalled the biting sarcasms
• 33:26
  Speaker 1: of Voltaire, the calm reasoning of Hume, and I repeated
• 33:30
  Speaker 1: to myself ad nauseum the words of Rousseau, who said
• 33:32
  Speaker 1: that superstition, the disturber of society, could never be too
• 33:37
  Speaker 1: strongly attacked. Why should the sight, the phantasmagoria, rather, i argued,
• 33:43
  Speaker 1: of that which we know in a waking sense to
• 33:45
  Speaker 1: be false, come to affect us at all? Why should names, who,
• 33:49
  Speaker 1: since we see, not fray us with things that be not.
• 33:54
  Speaker 1: One day the old captain was narrating to us the
• 33:56
  Speaker 1: various superstitions to which sailors were addicted. Thompus English missionary
• 34:01
  Speaker 1: remarked that Fielding had declared long ago that superstition renders
• 34:04
  Speaker 1: men a fool, after which he hesitated for an instant
• 34:08
  Speaker 1: and abruptly stopped. I had not taken any part in
• 34:11
  Speaker 1: the general conversation, But no sooner had the Reverend speaker
• 34:16
  Speaker 1: relieved himself of the quotation than I saw in that
• 34:19
  Speaker 1: halo vibrating light which I now noticed almost constantly over
• 34:22
  Speaker 1: every human head on the steamer. The words of Fielding's
• 34:26
  Speaker 1: next proposition and skepticism makes him mad. I had heard
• 34:30
  Speaker 1: and read of the claims of those who pretended to
• 34:33
  Speaker 1: see her ship, that they often see the thoughts of
• 34:35
  Speaker 1: people traced in the aura of those present, whatever aura
• 34:39
  Speaker 1: may mean with others. I had now a personal experience
• 34:43
  Speaker 1: of the truth of the claim, and felt sufficiently disgusted
• 34:45
  Speaker 1: with the discovery ay a clairvoyant. A new horror added
• 34:51
  Speaker 1: to my life. An absurd and ridiculous gift developed, which
• 34:54
  Speaker 1: I shall have to conceal from alle, feeling ashamed of it,
• 34:57
  Speaker 1: as if it were a case of leprosy. The this
• 35:00
  Speaker 1: moment my hatred to the Yamabushi and even to my
• 35:02
  Speaker 1: venerable old friend, the bonds knew no bounds. The former had, evidently,
• 35:06
  Speaker 1: by his manipulations over me, while I was lying unconscious,
• 35:09
  Speaker 1: touched some unknown physiological spring in my brain, and by
• 35:13
  Speaker 1: loosening it had called forth a faculty generally hidden in
• 35:16
  Speaker 1: the human constitution. And it was the Japanese priest who
• 35:19
  Speaker 1: had introduced the wretch into my house. But my anger
• 35:23
  Speaker 1: and my curses were alike useless and could be of
• 35:26
  Speaker 1: no avail. Moreover, we were already in European waters, and
• 35:30
  Speaker 1: in a few more days we should be at Hamburg.
• 35:33
  Speaker 1: Then would my doubts and fears be set at rest,
• 35:36
  Speaker 1: and I should find, to my intense relief that although clairvoyance,
• 35:39
  Speaker 1: as regards the reading of human thoughts on the spot,
• 35:42
  Speaker 1: may have some truth in it, the discernment of such
• 35:45
  Speaker 1: events at a distance, as I had dreamed of, was
• 35:48
  Speaker 1: an impossibility for human faculties. Notwithstanding all my reasoning, however,
• 35:53
  Speaker 1: my heart was sick with fear and full of the
• 35:56
  Speaker 1: blackest presentiments. I felt that my doom was closing. I
• 36:01
  Speaker 1: suffered terribly. My nervous and mental prostration, becoming intensified day
• 36:06
  Speaker 1: by day. The night before we entered Port, I had
• 36:09
  Speaker 1: a dream. I fancied I was dead. My body lay
• 36:13
  Speaker 1: cold and stiff in its last sleep, whilst its dying consciousness,
• 36:17
  Speaker 1: which still regarded itself as I realizing the event, was
• 36:21
  Speaker 1: preparing to meet in a few seconds, its own extinction.
• 36:25
  Speaker 1: It had been always my belief that, as the brain
• 36:27
  Speaker 1: preserved heath longer than any of the other organs, and
• 36:31
  Speaker 1: was the last to cease its activity, the thought in
• 36:34
  Speaker 1: its survived bodily death by several minutes. Therefore, I was
• 36:38
  Speaker 1: not in the least surprised to find in my dream that,
• 36:40
  Speaker 1: while the frame had already crossed that awful gulf, no
• 36:43
  Speaker 1: mortal ever repassed, its consciousness was still in the gray twilight,
• 36:48
  Speaker 1: the first shadows of the great mystery. Thus my thought rapt,
• 36:53
  Speaker 1: as I believed, in the remnants of its now fast
• 36:55
  Speaker 1: retiring vitality, was watching with the intense and eager curiosity
• 37:00
  Speaker 1: the approaches of its own dissolution, I e. Of its annihilation.
• 37:05
  Speaker 1: I was hastening to record my last impressions, lest the
• 37:09
  Speaker 1: dark mantle of eternal oblivion should envelop me before I
• 37:12
  Speaker 1: had time to feel and enjoy the great, the supreme
• 37:16
  Speaker 1: triumph of learning that my lifelong convictions were true, that
• 37:19
  Speaker 1: death is a complete and absolute cessation of conscious being.
• 37:23
  Speaker 1: Everything around me was getting darker with every moment. Huge
• 37:27
  Speaker 1: gray shadows were moving before my vision, slowly at first,
• 37:30
  Speaker 1: then with accelerated motion, until they commenced whirling around with
• 37:34
  Speaker 1: an almost vertiginous rapidity, then, as though that motion had
• 37:38
  Speaker 1: taken place only for purposes of brewing darkness. The object,
• 37:41
  Speaker 1: once reached it slackened its speed, and as the darkness
• 37:45
  Speaker 1: became gradually transformed into intense blackness, it ceased altogether. There
• 37:51
  Speaker 1: was nothing now within my immediate perceptions but that fathomless
• 37:56
  Speaker 1: black space, as dark as pitch. To me, it appeared
• 38:01
  Speaker 1: as limitless and as silent as the shoreless ocean of eternity,
• 38:05
  Speaker 1: upon which time the progeny of man's brain is for
• 38:09
  Speaker 1: ever gliding, but which it can never cross. Dream is
• 38:13
  Speaker 1: defined by Cato as but the image of our hopes
• 38:16
  Speaker 1: and fears. Having never feared death. When awake, I felt
• 38:20
  Speaker 1: in this dream of mine, calm and serene at the
• 38:23
  Speaker 1: idea of my speedy end. In truth, I felt rather relieved,
• 38:27
  Speaker 1: at the thought, probably owing to my recent mental suffering,
• 38:30
  Speaker 1: that the end of all of doubt, a fear for
• 38:33
  Speaker 1: those I loved, of suffering, and of every anxiety was
• 38:36
  Speaker 1: close at hand. The constant anguish that had been gnawing
• 38:40
  Speaker 1: ceaselessly at my heavy aching heart for many a long
• 38:43
  Speaker 1: and weary month had now become unbearable. And if, as
• 38:47
  Speaker 1: Seneca thinks, death is but the ceasing to be what
• 38:50
  Speaker 1: we were before, it was better that I should die.
• 38:55
  Speaker 1: The body is dead, Aye, its consciousness, that which is
• 38:59
  Speaker 1: all that remains of me now for a few moments longer,
• 39:02
  Speaker 1: and preparing to follow. Mental perceptions will get weaker, more
• 39:07
  Speaker 1: dim and hazy with every second of time, until the
• 39:10
  Speaker 1: longed fore oblivion envelops me completely in its cold shroud.
• 39:15
  Speaker 1: Sweet is the magic hand of death. The great world
• 39:18
  Speaker 1: comforter profound and dreamless as sleep in its unyielding arms.
• 39:23
  Speaker 1: Yea verily, it is a welcome guest, a calm and
• 39:27
  Speaker 1: peaceful haven amidst the roaring billows of the ocean of life,
• 39:31
  Speaker 1: whose breakers lash in vain, the rock bound shores of death,
• 39:37
  Speaker 1: happy the lonely bark that drifts into the still waters
• 39:40
  Speaker 1: of its black gulf after having been so long, so
• 39:43
  Speaker 1: cruelly tossed about by the angry waves of sentient life,
• 39:47
  Speaker 1: moored in it for evermore, Kneeding no longer either sail
• 39:51
  Speaker 1: or rudder, my bark will now find rest. Welcome then
• 39:55
  Speaker 1: o death, at this tempting price and fare thee well
• 39:58
  Speaker 1: poor body, which, having neither so sought it nor derive
• 40:01
  Speaker 1: pleasure from it, I now readily give up. While uttering
• 40:06
  Speaker 1: this death chant to the prostrate form before me, I
• 40:08
  Speaker 1: bent over examined it with curiosity. I felt the surrounding
• 40:13
  Speaker 1: darkness oppressing me, weighing on me almost tangibly, and I fancied.
• 40:16
  Speaker 1: I found in it the approach of the liberator. I
• 40:19
  Speaker 1: was welcoming. And yet how very strange If real final
• 40:24
  Speaker 1: death takes place in our consciousness, If after the bodily death,
• 40:28
  Speaker 1: I and my conscious perceptions are one, how is it
• 40:32
  Speaker 1: that these perceptions do not become weaker? Why does my
• 40:35
  Speaker 1: brain action seem as vigorous as ever now that I
• 40:40
  Speaker 1: am de facto dead. Nor does the usual feeling of anxiety,
• 40:45
  Speaker 1: the heavy heart so called decrease in intensity. Nay, it
• 40:49
  Speaker 1: even seems to become worse, unspeakably so how long it
• 40:53
  Speaker 1: takes for full oblivion to arrive. Ah, here's my body again,
• 40:59
  Speaker 1: vanished out of sight for a second or two, it
• 41:01
  Speaker 1: reappears before me once more. How white and ghastly it looks.
• 41:05
  Speaker 1: Yet its brain cannot be quite dead, since I, its consciousness,
• 41:11
  Speaker 1: am still acting, Since we too fancy that we still are,
• 41:14
  Speaker 1: that we live and think disconnected from our creator and
• 41:18
  Speaker 1: its ideating cells. Suddenly I felt a strong desire to
• 41:22
  Speaker 1: see how much longer the progress of dissolution was likely
• 41:25
  Speaker 1: to last before it placed its last seal on the
• 41:28
  Speaker 1: brain and rendered it inactive. I examined my brain and
• 41:32
  Speaker 1: its cranial cavity through the to me entirely transparent walls
• 41:36
  Speaker 1: and roof of the skull, and even touched the brain matter.
• 41:41
  Speaker 1: How or with whose hands I am now unable to say,
• 41:46
  Speaker 1: but the impression of the slimy, intensely cold matter produced
• 41:49
  Speaker 1: a very strong impression on me in that dream. To
• 41:54
  Speaker 1: my great dismay, I found that the blood having entirely congealed,
• 41:58
  Speaker 1: and the brain tissues having themselves undergone a change that
• 42:01
  Speaker 1: would no longer permit any molecular action. It became impossible
• 42:07
  Speaker 1: for me to account for the phenomenon. Now taking place
• 42:09
  Speaker 1: with myself. Here was I, or my consciousness, which is
• 42:14
  Speaker 1: all one standing, apparently entirely disconnected from my brain, which
• 42:18
  Speaker 1: could no longer function. But I had no time left
• 42:21
  Speaker 1: for reflection. A new and most extraordinary change in my
• 42:24
  Speaker 1: perceptions had taken place, and now engrossed my whole attention.
• 42:28
  Speaker 1: What does this signify? The same darkness was around me
• 42:33
  Speaker 1: as before, a black, impenetrable space extending in every direction,
• 42:37
  Speaker 1: only now right before me in whatever direction I was looking,
• 42:40
  Speaker 1: moving with me which way soever I moved, there was
• 42:43
  Speaker 1: a gigantic round clock, a disk whose large white face
• 42:47
  Speaker 1: shone ominously on the ebony black background. As I looked
• 42:51
  Speaker 1: at its huge dial and at the pendulum, moving to
• 42:54
  Speaker 1: and fro regularly and slowly in space, as if its
• 42:57
  Speaker 1: swinging meant to defy it eternity. I saw its needles
• 43:00
  Speaker 1: pointing to seven minutes past five, the hour at which
• 43:04
  Speaker 1: my torture had commenced at Kyoto. I had barely found
• 43:08
  Speaker 1: time to think of the coincidence, when, to my unutterable horror,
• 43:11
  Speaker 1: I felt myself going through the same, the identical process
• 43:15
  Speaker 1: that I had been made to experience on that memorable
• 43:17
  Speaker 1: and fatal day. I swam underground, dashing swiftly through the earth.
• 43:21
  Speaker 1: I found myself once more in the pauper's grave, and
• 43:23
  Speaker 1: recognized my brother in law and the mangled remains. I
• 43:26
  Speaker 1: witnessed his terrible death, entered my sister's house, followed her agony,
• 43:30
  Speaker 1: and saw her go mad. I went over the same
• 43:32
  Speaker 1: scenes without missing a single detail of them. But alas
• 43:36
  Speaker 1: I was no longer iron bound in the calm indifference
• 43:39
  Speaker 1: that had then been mine, and which in that first
• 43:41
  Speaker 1: vision had left me as unfeeling to my great misfortune,
• 43:44
  Speaker 1: as if I had been a heartless thing of rock.
• 43:48
  Speaker 1: My mental tortures were now becoming beyond description and well
• 43:51
  Speaker 1: nigh unbearable. Even the settled despair, The never ceasing anxiety
• 43:57
  Speaker 1: I was constantly experiencing when awake, had become now in
• 44:00
  Speaker 1: my dream, and in the face of this repetition of
• 44:03
  Speaker 1: vision and events, as an hour of darkened sunlight compared
• 44:06
  Speaker 1: to a deadly cyclone. Oh, how I suffered in this
• 44:09
  Speaker 1: wealth and pomp of infernal horrors, to which the conviction
• 44:12
  Speaker 1: of the survival of man's consciousness after death, For in
• 44:16
  Speaker 1: that dream I firmly believed that my body was dead,
• 44:18
  Speaker 1: added to the most terrifying of all the relative relief
• 44:22
  Speaker 1: I felt when, after going over the last scene, I
• 44:24
  Speaker 1: saw once more the great white face of the dial
• 44:27
  Speaker 1: before me was not of long duration. The long arrow
• 44:31
  Speaker 1: shaped needle was pointing on the colossal disk at seven
• 44:34
  Speaker 1: minutes and a half past five o'clock. But before I
• 44:37
  Speaker 1: had time to well realize the change, the needle moved
• 44:40
  Speaker 1: slowly backwards, stopping it precisely the seven minute and oh
• 44:45
  Speaker 1: cursed fate. I found myself driven into a repetition of
• 44:48
  Speaker 1: the same series over again. Once more. I swam underground
• 44:52
  Speaker 1: and saw and heard and suffered every torture that hell
• 44:55
  Speaker 1: can provide. I passed through every mental anguish known to
• 44:58
  Speaker 1: man or fiend. I returned to see the fatal dial
• 45:01
  Speaker 1: and its needle, after what appeared to me an eternity,
• 45:05
  Speaker 1: moved as before, only half a minute forward. I beheld
• 45:09
  Speaker 1: it with renewed terror, moving back again, and felt myself
• 45:13
  Speaker 1: propelled forward anew And so it went on and on
• 45:18
  Speaker 1: and on, time after time, in what seemed to me
• 45:22
  Speaker 1: an endless succession, a series which never had any beginning,
• 45:26
  Speaker 1: nor would it ever have an end. Worst of all,
• 45:30
  Speaker 1: my consciousness, my eye had apparently acquired the phenomenal capacity
• 45:35
  Speaker 1: of trebling, quadrupling, and even of decoplating itself. I lived, felt,
• 45:40
  Speaker 1: and suffered in the same space of time, in half
• 45:43
  Speaker 1: a dozen different places at once, passing over various events
• 45:46
  Speaker 1: of my life, at different epochs and under the most
• 45:48
  Speaker 1: dissimilar circumstances. Though predominant overall was my spiritual experience at Kyoto. Thus,
• 45:56
  Speaker 1: as in the famous fugue in Don Giovanni, the heart
• 45:59
  Speaker 1: rending notes of Elvira's Aria of Despair ring high above,
• 46:04
  Speaker 1: but interfere in no way with the melody of the minuet,
• 46:08
  Speaker 1: the song of seduction, and the chorus. So I went
• 46:11
  Speaker 1: over and over my travailed woes, the feelings of agony
• 46:15
  Speaker 1: unspeakable at the awful sights of my vision, the repetition
• 46:19
  Speaker 1: of which blunted in no wise even a single pang
• 46:22
  Speaker 1: of my despair and horror. Nor did these feelings weaken
• 46:25
  Speaker 1: in the least scenes and events entirely disconnected with the
• 46:28
  Speaker 1: first one that I was living through again, or interfere
• 46:31
  Speaker 1: in any way the one with the other. It was
• 46:35
  Speaker 1: a maddening experience, a series of contrapuntal mental phantasmagoria. From
• 46:40
  Speaker 1: real life. Here was I, during the same half a
• 46:43
  Speaker 1: minute of time, examining with cold curiosity the mingled remains
• 46:47
  Speaker 1: of my sister's husband, following with the same indifference the
• 46:50
  Speaker 1: effects of the news on her brain as in my
• 46:52
  Speaker 1: first kyoto vision, and feeling at the same time held
• 46:55
  Speaker 1: torture for these very events, as when I returned to consciousness,
• 46:59
  Speaker 1: I was listening to the philosophical discourses of the bonds,
• 47:03
  Speaker 1: of every word of which I heard and understood, and
• 47:05
  Speaker 1: was trying to laugh him to scorn. I was again
• 47:07
  Speaker 1: a child in the youth, hearing my mother's and my
• 47:10
  Speaker 1: sweet sister's voices admonishing me and teaching me duty to
• 47:13
  Speaker 1: all men. I was saving a friend from drowning, and
• 47:17
  Speaker 1: was sneering at his age father, who thanked me for
• 47:19
  Speaker 1: having saved a soul, yet unprepared to meet his maker.
• 47:24
  Speaker 1: Speak of dual consciousness, you psycho physiologists, I cried in
• 47:29
  Speaker 1: one of the moments when agony mental and as it
• 47:32
  Speaker 1: seemed to me, physical, also had arrived at a degree
• 47:35
  Speaker 1: of intensity which would have killed a dozen living men.
• 47:37
  Speaker 1: Speak of your psychological and physiological experiments, you school men,
• 47:41
  Speaker 1: puffed up with pride and book learning. Here I am
• 47:44
  Speaker 1: to give you the lie. And now I was reading
• 47:47
  Speaker 1: the works and holding converse with learned professors and lecturers
• 47:51
  Speaker 1: who had led me to my fatal skepticism, And while
• 47:55
  Speaker 1: arguing the impossibility of consciousness divorced from its brain, I
• 47:59
  Speaker 1: was shedding tears of blood over the supposed fate of
• 48:02
  Speaker 1: my nieces and nephews more terrible than all I knew,
• 48:06
  Speaker 1: as only a liberated consciousness can know. That all I
• 48:10
  Speaker 1: had seen in my vision at Japan, and all that
• 48:13
  Speaker 1: I was seeing and hearing over and over again, now
• 48:17
  Speaker 1: was true in every point in detail, that it was
• 48:20
  Speaker 1: a long string of ghastly and terrible still of real,
• 48:25
  Speaker 1: actual facts. For perhaps the hundredth time I had riveted
• 48:29
  Speaker 1: my attention on the needle of the clock, I lost
• 48:32
  Speaker 1: the number of my gyrations, and was fast coming to
• 48:35
  Speaker 1: the conclusion that they would never stop, that consciousness is,
• 48:39
  Speaker 1: after all indestructible, and that this was to be my
• 48:42
  Speaker 1: punishment in eternity. I was beginning to realize from personal
• 48:46
  Speaker 1: experience how the condemned sinners would feel, were not eternal
• 48:50
  Speaker 1: damnation a logical and mathematical impossibility in an ever progressing universe.
• 48:55
  Speaker 1: I still found the voice to argue yea. Indeed, at
• 48:59
  Speaker 1: this hour of my ever increasing agony, my consciousness now
• 49:02
  Speaker 1: my synonym, For I had still the power of revolting
• 49:05
  Speaker 1: at certain theological claims, of denying all their propositions, all
• 49:10
  Speaker 1: save itself. No, I denied the independent nature of my
• 49:15
  Speaker 1: consciousness no longer, for I knew it now to be such.
• 49:18
  Speaker 1: But is it eternal? Withal o thou incomprehensible and terrible reality?
• 49:23
  Speaker 1: But if thou art eternal, who then art thou? Since
• 49:27
  Speaker 1: there is no deity, no God? Whence dost thou come?
• 49:31
  Speaker 1: And when didst thou first appear? If thou art not
• 49:34
  Speaker 1: a part of the cold body lying yonder? And whither
• 49:36
  Speaker 1: dost thou lead me? Who am thyself? And shall our
• 49:40
  Speaker 1: thought and fancy have an end? What is thy real name? Thou?
• 49:44
  Speaker 1: Unfathomable reality, an impenetrable mystery. Oh, I would fain annihilate
• 49:50
  Speaker 1: thee soul vision? Who speaks of soul? And whose voice
• 49:54
  Speaker 1: is this? It says that I see now for myself
• 49:57
  Speaker 1: that there is a soul in man. After all, I
• 50:01
  Speaker 1: deny this. My soul, my vital soul, or the spirit
• 50:05
  Speaker 1: of life, has expired with my body, with the gray
• 50:07
  Speaker 1: matter of my brain. This eye of mine, this consciousness,
• 50:12
  Speaker 1: is not yet proven to me as eternal reincarnation in
• 50:16
  Speaker 1: which the Bonds felt so anxious, I should believe may
• 50:19
  Speaker 1: be true. Why not is not the flower born year
• 50:23
  Speaker 1: after year from the same root. Hence this eye, once
• 50:27
  Speaker 1: separated from its brain, losing its balance and calling forth
• 50:30
  Speaker 1: such a host of visions before reincarnating. I was again
• 50:34
  Speaker 1: face to face with the inexorable fatal clock, and as
• 50:38
  Speaker 1: I was watching its needle, I heard the voice of
• 50:40
  Speaker 1: the Bonds, coming out of the depths of its white face, saying,
• 50:44
  Speaker 1: in this case, I fear you would have only to
• 50:47
  Speaker 1: open and to shut the temple door over and over again,
• 50:52
  Speaker 1: during a period which, however short, would seem to you
• 50:55
  Speaker 1: an eternity. The clock had vanished, darkness made room for light.
• 51:01
  Speaker 1: The voice of my old friend was drowned by a
• 51:03
  Speaker 1: multitude of voices overhead on deck, and I awoke in
• 51:08
  Speaker 1: my berth, covered with a cold perspiration and faint with terror.
• 51:13
  Speaker 1: Eight a tale of woe. We were at Hamburg, and
• 51:17
  Speaker 1: no sooner had I seen my partners, who could hardly
• 51:20
  Speaker 1: recognize me, than with their consent and good wishes, I
• 51:22
  Speaker 1: started for Nuremberg half an hour after my arrival, the
• 51:26
  Speaker 1: last doubt with regard to the correctness of my vision
• 51:29
  Speaker 1: had disappeared. The reality was worse than any expectations could
• 51:33
  Speaker 1: have made it, and I was henceforward doomed to the
• 51:35
  Speaker 1: most desolate life. I ascertained that I had seen the
• 51:38
  Speaker 1: terrible tragedy with all its heart rending details. My brother
• 51:42
  Speaker 1: in law killed under the wheels of a machine, my
• 51:45
  Speaker 1: sister insane and now rapidly sinking toward her, and my niece,
• 51:50
  Speaker 1: the sweet flower of nature's fairest work, dishonored in a
• 51:53
  Speaker 1: din of infamy, the little children dead of a contagious
• 51:57
  Speaker 1: disease in an orphanage, my last surviving nephew at c
• 52:01
  Speaker 1: no one knew where A whole house, a home of
• 52:04
  Speaker 1: love and peace, scattered, and I left alone, a witness
• 52:09
  Speaker 1: of this world of death, of desolation and dishonor. The
• 52:14
  Speaker 1: news filled me with infinite despair, and I sank helpless
• 52:17
  Speaker 1: before this wholesale, dire disaster which rose before me. All
• 52:21
  Speaker 1: at once. The shock proved too much, and I fainted.
• 52:25
  Speaker 1: The last thing I heard before entirely losing my consciousness
• 52:29
  Speaker 1: was a remark of the Bergmeister Haju before leaving Kyoto,
• 52:33
  Speaker 1: telegraphed to the city authorities of your whereabouts and of
• 52:36
  Speaker 1: your intention of coming home to take charge of your
• 52:39
  Speaker 1: young relatives. We might have placed them elsewhere and thus
• 52:42
  Speaker 1: have saved them from their fate. No one knew that
• 52:44
  Speaker 1: the children had a well to do relative. They were
• 52:46
  Speaker 1: left paupers and had to be dealt with as such.
• 52:49
  Speaker 1: They were comparatively strangers in Nuremberg, and under the unfortunate
• 52:53
  Speaker 1: circumstances you could hardly have expected anything else. I can
• 52:56
  Speaker 1: only express my sincere sorrow. It was this terrible knowledge
• 53:02
  Speaker 1: that I might at any rate have saved my young
• 53:05
  Speaker 1: niece from her unmerited fate, but that through my neglect
• 53:09
  Speaker 1: I had not done so. That was killing me. Had
• 53:12
  Speaker 1: I but followed the friendly advice of the bonds to
• 53:15
  Speaker 1: Morah and telegraphed to the authority some weeks previous to
• 53:18
  Speaker 1: my return, much might have been avoided. It was all this,
• 53:22
  Speaker 1: coupled with the fact that I could no longer doubt
• 53:25
  Speaker 1: clairvoyance and claire audience, the possibility of which I had
• 53:28
  Speaker 1: so long denied, that brought me so heavily down upon
• 53:32
  Speaker 1: my knees. I could avoid the censure of my fellow creatures.
• 53:36
  Speaker 1: But I could never escape the stings of my conscience,
• 53:39
  Speaker 1: the reproaches of my own aching heart. No, not as
• 53:43
  Speaker 1: long as I left. I cursed my stubborn skepticism, my
• 53:48
  Speaker 1: denial facts, my early education. I cursed myself and the
• 53:52
  Speaker 1: whole world. For several days, I contrived not to sink
• 53:56
  Speaker 1: beneath my load, for I had a duty to perform
• 53:59
  Speaker 1: to the dead and to the living. But my sister,
• 54:02
  Speaker 1: once rescued from the pauper's asylum, placed under the care
• 54:05
  Speaker 1: of the best physicians, with her daughter to attend to
• 54:07
  Speaker 1: her last moments, and the jewess whom I had brought
• 54:10
  Speaker 1: to confess her crime, safely lodged in jail. My fortitude
• 54:13
  Speaker 1: and strength suddenly abandoned me. Hardly a week after my arrival,
• 54:18
  Speaker 1: I was myself no better than a raving maniac, helpless
• 54:22
  Speaker 1: in the strong grip of a brain fever. For several weeks,
• 54:25
  Speaker 1: I lay between life and death, the terrible disease, defying
• 54:29
  Speaker 1: the skill of the best physicians. At last, my strong
• 54:33
  Speaker 1: constitution prevailed, and to my life long sorrow, they proclaimed
• 54:38
  Speaker 1: me saved. I heard the news with a bleeding heart,
• 54:41
  Speaker 1: doomed to drag the loathsome burden of life. Henceforth alone
• 54:45
  Speaker 1: and in constant remorse, hoping for no help or remedy
• 54:48
  Speaker 1: on earth, and still refusing to believe in the possibility
• 54:51
  Speaker 1: of anything better than a short survival of consciousness beyond
• 54:56
  Speaker 1: the grave. This unexpected return to life at a only
• 55:00
  Speaker 1: one more drop of gall to my bitter feelings. They
• 55:04
  Speaker 1: were hardly soothed by the immediate return during the first
• 55:07
  Speaker 1: days of my convalescence of those unwelcome and unsought for
• 55:11
  Speaker 1: visions whose correctness and reality I could deny no more
• 55:16
  Speaker 1: alas the day they were no longer in my skeptical,
• 55:20
  Speaker 1: blind mind. The children of an idle brain begot of
• 55:24
  Speaker 1: nothing but vain fantasy, but always the faithful photographs of
• 55:29
  Speaker 1: the real woes and sufferings of my fellow creatures, of
• 55:32
  Speaker 1: my best friends. Thus I found myself doomed whenever I
• 55:37
  Speaker 1: was left for a moment alone to the helpless torture
• 55:40
  Speaker 1: of a chained prometheus during the still hours of night,
• 55:44
  Speaker 1: as though held by some pitiless iron hand, I found
• 55:47
  Speaker 1: myself led to my sister's bedside, forced to watch their
• 55:50
  Speaker 1: hour after hour, and see the silent disintegration of her
• 55:54
  Speaker 1: wasted organism, to witness and feel the sufferings that her
• 55:58
  Speaker 1: own tenantless brain could no longer reflect or convey to
• 56:01
  Speaker 1: her perceptions. But there was something still more horrible to
• 56:05
  Speaker 1: barb the dart that could never be extricated. I had
• 56:08
  Speaker 1: to look by day at the childish, innocent face of
• 56:12
  Speaker 1: my young niece, so sublimely simple and guileless in her pollution,
• 56:17
  Speaker 1: and to witness by night how the full knowledge and
• 56:20
  Speaker 1: recollection of her dishonor of her young life, now forever blasted,
• 56:24
  Speaker 1: came to her in her dreams as soon as she
• 56:26
  Speaker 1: was asleep. These dreams took an objective form to me,
• 56:30
  Speaker 1: as they had done on the steamer. I had to
• 56:32
  Speaker 1: live them over again, night after night, and feel the
• 56:35
  Speaker 1: same terrible despair. For now, since I believed in the
• 56:39
  Speaker 1: reality of seership, and had come to the conclusion that
• 56:42
  Speaker 1: in our bodies lies hidden as in the caterpillar the chrysalis,
• 56:45
  Speaker 1: which may contain, in its turn the butterfly, the symbol
• 56:48
  Speaker 1: of the soul, I no longer remained indifferent as of
• 56:51
  Speaker 1: yore to what I witnessed in my soul life. Something
• 56:54
  Speaker 1: had suddenly developed in me, had broken loose from its
• 56:57
  Speaker 1: icy cocoon. Evidently I no longer saw only in consequence
• 57:01
  Speaker 1: of the identification of my inner nature with a dyged gin.
• 57:05
  Speaker 1: My visions arose in consequence of a direct personal psychic development,
• 57:10
  Speaker 1: the fiendish creatures only taking care that I should see
• 57:13
  Speaker 1: nothing of an agreeable or elevating nature. Thus now not
• 57:17
  Speaker 1: an unconscious pang in my dying sister's emaciated body, not
• 57:21
  Speaker 1: a thrill of horror in my niece's restless sleep at
• 57:24
  Speaker 1: the recollection of the crime perpetrated upon her an innocent child,
• 57:27
  Speaker 1: but found a responsive echo in my bleeding heart. The
• 57:31
  Speaker 1: deep fountain of sympathetic love and sorrow had gushed out
• 57:35
  Speaker 1: from the physical heart and was now loudly echoed by
• 57:38
  Speaker 1: the awakened soul separated from the body. Thus had I
• 57:42
  Speaker 1: to train the cup of misery to the very dregs.
• 57:45
  Speaker 1: Woe is me. It was a daily and nightly torture. Oh,
• 57:49
  Speaker 1: how I mourned over my proud folly. How I was
• 57:52
  Speaker 1: punished for having neglected to avail myself at Kioto of
• 57:56
  Speaker 1: the proffered purification. For now I had come to believe
• 58:00
  Speaker 1: even in the efficacy of the latter. The didge gin
• 58:03
  Speaker 1: had indeed obtained control over me, and the fiend had
• 58:06
  Speaker 1: let loose all the dogs of hell upon his victim.
• 58:09
  Speaker 1: At last, the awful gulf was reached and crossed. The poor,
• 58:14
  Speaker 1: insane martyr dropped into her dark and well welcome grave,
• 58:18
  Speaker 1: leaving behind her but for a few short months her
• 58:21
  Speaker 1: young her firstborn daughter, Consumption, made short work of that tender,
• 58:25
  Speaker 1: girlish frame. Hardly a year after my arrival, I was
• 58:29
  Speaker 1: left alone in the whole wide world, my only surviving
• 58:32
  Speaker 1: nephew having expressed a desire to follow his seafaring career.
• 58:37
  Speaker 1: And now the sequel of my sad, sad story is
• 58:39
  Speaker 1: soon told a wreck a prematurely old man, looking at thirty,
• 58:44
  Speaker 1: as though sixty winters had passed over my doomed head,
• 58:48
  Speaker 1: and owing to the never ceasing visions myself daily on
• 58:52
  Speaker 1: the verge of insanity, I suddenly formed a desperate resolution.
• 58:57
  Speaker 1: I would return to Kiyoto and seek out the Yamabush.
• 59:00
  Speaker 1: I would prostrate myself at the feet of the holy Man.
• 59:03
  Speaker 1: I would not leave him until he had recalled the
• 59:06
  Speaker 1: Frankenstein he had raised, the Frankenstein with whom at the
• 59:09
  Speaker 1: time it was I myself who would not part through
• 59:12
  Speaker 1: my insolent pride and unbelief. Three months later I was
• 59:17
  Speaker 1: in my Japanese home again, and I at once sought
• 59:20
  Speaker 1: out my old venerable bonds to Murrah Hidieri. I now
• 59:24
  Speaker 1: implored him to take me without an hour's delay to
• 59:27
  Speaker 1: the Yamabushi, the innocent cause of my daily tortures. His
• 59:31
  Speaker 1: answer but placed the last the supreme seal on my doom,
• 59:36
  Speaker 1: and tenfold intensified my despair. The Yamabushi had left the
• 59:40
  Speaker 1: country for lands unknown. He had departed one fine morning
• 59:45
  Speaker 1: into the interior on a pilgrimage, and, according to custom,
• 59:48
  Speaker 1: would be absent unless natural death shortened the period for
• 59:52
  Speaker 1: no less than seven years. In this mischance, I applied
• 59:56
  Speaker 1: for help and protection of other learned Yamabushies, and though
• 59:59
  Speaker 1: well where how useless it was in my case to
• 1:00:01
  Speaker 1: seek efficient cure from any other adept my excellent old
• 1:00:05
  Speaker 1: friend did everything he could to help me in my misfortune,
• 1:00:09
  Speaker 1: but it was to no purpose, and the canker worm
• 1:00:11
  Speaker 1: of my life's despair could not be thoroughly extricated. I
• 1:00:15
  Speaker 1: found from them that not one of these learned men
• 1:00:17
  Speaker 1: could promise to relieve me entirely from the demon of
• 1:00:20
  Speaker 1: clairvoyant obsession. It was he who raised certain didge Gins,
• 1:00:25
  Speaker 1: calling on them to show futurity or things that had
• 1:00:27
  Speaker 1: already come to pass, who alone had full control over them.
• 1:00:32
  Speaker 1: With kind sympathy which I had now learned to appreciate,
• 1:00:34
  Speaker 1: the Holy men invited me to join the group of
• 1:00:36
  Speaker 1: their disciples and learn from them what I could do
• 1:00:39
  Speaker 1: for myself. Will alone, faith in your own sole powers
• 1:00:44
  Speaker 1: can help you now, they said, But it may take
• 1:00:47
  Speaker 1: several years to undo even a part of the great mischief,
• 1:00:50
  Speaker 1: they added, A didge Gin is easily dislodged in the beginning.
• 1:00:54
  Speaker 1: If left alone, he takes possession of a man's nature,
• 1:00:57
  Speaker 1: and it becomes almost impossible to uproot the fiend without
• 1:01:00
  Speaker 1: killing his victim. Persuaded that there was nothing but this
• 1:01:04
  Speaker 1: left for me to do, I gradually assented, doing my
• 1:01:07
  Speaker 1: best to believe in all that these holy men believed in,
• 1:01:10
  Speaker 1: and yet ever failing to do so. In my heart,
• 1:01:12
  Speaker 1: the demon of unbelief in all denials seemed rooted in
• 1:01:15
  Speaker 1: me more firmly even than the dodge Gin. Still I
• 1:01:19
  Speaker 1: did all I could do, decided, as I was not
• 1:01:21
  Speaker 1: to lose my last chance of salvation, Therefore, I proceeded
• 1:01:24
  Speaker 1: without delay to free myself from the world and my
• 1:01:27
  Speaker 1: commercial obligations, in order to live for several years an
• 1:01:30
  Speaker 1: independent life. I settled my accounts with my Hamburg partners
• 1:01:35
  Speaker 1: and severed my connection with the firm. Notwithstanding considerable financial
• 1:01:39
  Speaker 1: losses resulting from such a precipitate liquidation. I found myself,
• 1:01:43
  Speaker 1: after closing the accounts, a far richer man than I
• 1:01:45
  Speaker 1: had thought I was. But wealth had no longer any
• 1:01:48
  Speaker 1: attraction for me, now that I had no one to
• 1:01:50
  Speaker 1: share it with, no one to work for. Life had
• 1:01:54
  Speaker 1: become a burden. And such was my indifference to my future, that,
• 1:01:57
  Speaker 1: while giving away all my fortune to my nephew in
• 1:02:00
  Speaker 1: case he should return alive from his sea voyage, I
• 1:02:03
  Speaker 1: should have neglected entirely even a small provision for myself,
• 1:02:06
  Speaker 1: had not my native partner interfered and insisted upon my
• 1:02:09
  Speaker 1: making it. I now recognized. Would Lao say that knowledge
• 1:02:13
  Speaker 1: was the only firm hold for a man to trust to,
• 1:02:16
  Speaker 1: as it is the only one that cannot be shaken
• 1:02:18
  Speaker 1: by any tempest. Wealth is a weak anchor in days
• 1:02:22
  Speaker 1: of sorrow, and self conceit the most fatal counselor. Hence
• 1:02:26
  Speaker 1: I followed the advice of my friends and laid aside
• 1:02:29
  Speaker 1: for myself a modest sum which would be sufficient to
• 1:02:33
  Speaker 1: assure me a small income for life, or if I
• 1:02:37
  Speaker 1: ever left my new friends and instructors. Having settled my
• 1:02:40
  Speaker 1: earthly accounts and disposed of my belongings, at Kioto, I
• 1:02:44
  Speaker 1: joined the masters of the Long Vision, who took me
• 1:02:47
  Speaker 1: to their mysterious abode. There I remained for several years,
• 1:02:51
  Speaker 1: studying very earnestly and in the most complete solitude, seeing
• 1:02:55
  Speaker 1: no one but a few of the members of our
• 1:02:57
  Speaker 1: religious community. Many are the mystery of nature that I
• 1:03:01
  Speaker 1: have fathomed since then, and many a secret folio from
• 1:03:04
  Speaker 1: the library of zion Ene have I devoured, obtaining thereby
• 1:03:08
  Speaker 1: mastery over several kinds of invisible beings of a lower order.
• 1:03:12
  Speaker 1: But the great secret of power over the terrible dige
• 1:03:15
  Speaker 1: Gin I could not get. It remains in the possession
• 1:03:19
  Speaker 1: of a very limited number of the highest initiates of
• 1:03:22
  Speaker 1: the Laosee. The great majority of the Yamabushis themselves being
• 1:03:26
  Speaker 1: ignorant how to obtain such mastery over the dangerous elemental.
• 1:03:30
  Speaker 1: One who would reach such power of control would have
• 1:03:32
  Speaker 1: to become entirely identified with the yamabushis to accept their
• 1:03:36
  Speaker 1: views and beliefs, and to attain the highest degree of initiation.
• 1:03:40
  Speaker 1: Very naturally, I was found unfit to join the fraternity,
• 1:03:43
  Speaker 1: owing to many insurmountable reasons besides my congenital and inheradicable skepticism.
• 1:03:49
  Speaker 1: Though I tried hard to believe. Thus partially relieved of
• 1:03:52
  Speaker 1: my affliction and taught how to conjure the unwelcome visions away,
• 1:03:56
  Speaker 1: I still remained, and do remain to this day, helpless
• 1:03:59
  Speaker 1: to prevent their forced appearance before me. Now and then.
• 1:04:02
  Speaker 1: It was, after assuring myself of my unfitness for the
• 1:04:05
  Speaker 1: exalted position of an independent seer and adept, that I
• 1:04:09
  Speaker 1: reluctantly gave up any further trial. Nothing had been heard
• 1:04:13
  Speaker 1: of the Holy Man, the first innocent cause of my misfortune,
• 1:04:17
  Speaker 1: and the old Bonds himself, who occasionally visited me in
• 1:04:19
  Speaker 1: my retreat, either could not or would not inform me
• 1:04:23
  Speaker 1: of the whereabouts of the Amabushi. When therefore I had
• 1:04:26
  Speaker 1: to give up all hope of his ever relieving me
• 1:04:29
  Speaker 1: entirely from my fatal gift. I resolved to return to
• 1:04:31
  Speaker 1: Europe to settle in solitude for the rest of my life.
• 1:04:36
  Speaker 1: With this object in view, I purchased through my late partners,
• 1:04:39
  Speaker 1: the Swiss chalet in which my hapless sister and I
• 1:04:42
  Speaker 1: were born, where I had grown up under her care,
• 1:04:45
  Speaker 1: and selected it for my future hermitage. When bidding me
• 1:04:48
  Speaker 1: farewell for ever on the steamer which took me back
• 1:04:51
  Speaker 1: to my fatherland, the good old Bonds tried to console
• 1:04:55
  Speaker 1: me for my disappointments. My son, he said, regard all
• 1:05:00
  Speaker 1: that happened to you as your karma, a just retribution.
• 1:05:05
  Speaker 1: No one who has subjected himself willingly to the power
• 1:05:08
  Speaker 1: of a didge Gin can ever hope to become a
• 1:05:11
  Speaker 1: rahat unadept, a high souled yamabushi. Unless immediately purified at best,
• 1:05:18
  Speaker 1: as in your case, he may become fitted to oppose
• 1:05:21
  Speaker 1: and to successfully fight off the fiend. Like a scar
• 1:05:24
  Speaker 1: left after a poisonous wound, the trace of a didge
• 1:05:27
  Speaker 1: Gin can never be effaced from the soul until purified
• 1:05:31
  Speaker 1: by a new rebirth withal. Feel not dejected, but be
• 1:05:35
  Speaker 1: of good cheer in your affliction, since it has led
• 1:05:38
  Speaker 1: you to acquire true knowledge and to accept many a
• 1:05:41
  Speaker 1: truth you would have otherwise rejected with contempt and of
• 1:05:45
  Speaker 1: this priceless knowledge acquired through suffering and personal efforts, No
• 1:05:49
  Speaker 1: didge gen can ever deprive you. Fare thee well then,
• 1:05:53
  Speaker 1: and may the Mother of Mercy, the great Queen of Heaven,
• 1:05:56
  Speaker 1: afford you comfort and protection. We parted, and since then
• 1:06:00
  Speaker 1: I have led the life of an anchorite in constant
• 1:06:03
  Speaker 1: solitude and study, Though still occasionally afflicted, I do not
• 1:06:08
  Speaker 1: regret the years I have passed under the instruction of
• 1:06:10
  Speaker 1: the Yamabushis, but feel gratified for the knowledge received of
• 1:06:15
  Speaker 1: the priest Timura Hidiyeri. I think always with sincere affection
• 1:06:19
  Speaker 1: and respect. I corresponded regularly with him to the day
• 1:06:23
  Speaker 1: of his death, an event which, with all its to
• 1:06:26
  Speaker 1: me painful details, I had the unthinked for privilege of
• 1:06:30
  Speaker 1: witnessing across the seas at the very hour in which
• 1:06:34
  Speaker 1: it occurred. End ob Section two.