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39 - Centaur by Algernon Blackwood · Centaur

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  Speaker 1: Chapter thirty nine of The Centaur by Algernon Blackwood. This
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  Speaker 1: liveryvox recording is in the public domain. Read by yoganand
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  Speaker 1: The Centaur, Chapter thirty nine. The extraordinary abruptness of the
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  Speaker 1: transition produced no bewilderment, it seems. Realizing that without Rostom
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  Speaker 1: he would be in a position of helplessness that might
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  Speaker 1: be serious. The irishman put his hands to his lips
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  Speaker 1: and called out with authority to the running figure of
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  Speaker 1: his frightened kuite. He shouted to him to stop, there's
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  Speaker 1: nothing to fear. Come back. Are you afraid of a
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  Speaker 1: gust of wind? And in his face and voice perhaps
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  Speaker 1: two in his manner, were something he had brought back
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  Speaker 1: from the vision. For the man stopped at once in
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  Speaker 1: his headlong courts paused a moment to stare and question,
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  Speaker 1: and then, though still looking over his shoulder and making
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  Speaker 1: occasional signs of his religion, came slowly back to his
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  Speaker 1: employer's side. Again, it has passed, said O'Malley, in a
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  Speaker 1: voice that seemed to crumble in his mouth. It's gone
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  Speaker 1: again into the mountains. Whence it came? We are safe
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  Speaker 1: with me, he added, not without a secret sense of humor,
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  Speaker 1: staring at him. You will always be safe. I can
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  Speaker 1: protect his bloth. He felt as normal as a British
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  Speaker 1: officer giving orders to his soldiers, and the Georgian slowly
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  Speaker 1: recovered his composure, yet for a long time, keeping close
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  Speaker 1: to the other side. The transition thus had been as
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  Speaker 1: sudden and complete as anything well could be. O'Malley described
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  Speaker 1: it as the instant in his dropping of a shutter
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  Speaker 1: across's mind. The entire vision had lasted but a fraction
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  Speaker 1: of a second, and in a fraction of a second, too,
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  Speaker 1: he had returned to his state of every day, lesser consciousness.
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  Speaker 1: That blending with the Earth's great consciousness was but a
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  Speaker 1: flashing glimpse. After all, the extension of personality had been momentary,
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  Speaker 1: so absolute. Moreover was he return that, at first remembering nothing,
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  Speaker 1: he took up life again exactly where he had left it.
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  Speaker 1: The guide completed the gesture and the sentence which the
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  Speaker 1: vision had interrupted, and O'Malley similarly resumed his own thread
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  Speaker 1: of thought and action, while a hint remained that and
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  Speaker 1: a curious sense of interval alone were left to witness
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  Speaker 1: this flash of an immense vision of cosmic consciousness that
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  Speaker 1: apparently had filled so many days and nights. It was
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  Speaker 1: like waking suddenly in the night out of deep sleep.
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  Speaker 1: He said, not of one's own accord or gradually, but
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  Speaker 1: as when some one shakes you out of slumber and
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  Speaker 1: you are wide awake at once. You have been dreaming vigorously, thick, lively,
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  Speaker 1: crowded dreams, and they all vanish on the instant you
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  Speaker 1: catch the tail end of the procession, just as it
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  Speaker 1: is diving out of sight. In less than a second,
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  Speaker 1: all is gone. For this was the hint that remained.
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  Speaker 1: He caught the flying tail end of the vision. He
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  Speaker 1: knew he had seen something, but for the moment that
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  Speaker 1: was all. Then by degrees and afterwards the details re
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  Speaker 1: emerged in the days that followed. While with Rostom he
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  Speaker 1: completed the journey elderly planned the deeper consciousness gave back
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  Speaker 1: its memory peace by peace, and peace by peace. He
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  Speaker 1: set it down in note books as best he could.
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  Speaker 1: The memory was on deposit deep within him, and at
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  Speaker 1: intervals he tapped it. Hence, of course, is due the
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  Speaker 1: confused and fragmentary character of those beveldering entries. Hence, at
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  Speaker 1: the same time, too, their truth and value for here
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  Speaker 1: was no imaginative dream concocted in a mood of high invention.
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  Speaker 1: The parts were disjointed, incomplete, just as they came. The
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  Speaker 1: lesser consciousness, it seems, could not contain the thing complete,
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  Speaker 1: nor to the last I judged, did he ever know
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  Speaker 1: complete recapture. They wandered for two weeks and more about
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  Speaker 1: the mountains, meeting various adventure by the way reported duly
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  Speaker 1: in his letters of travel, but these concerned the outer
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  Speaker 1: man and have no proper place in this strange record.
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  Speaker 1: And by middle of July he found himself once more
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  Speaker 1: in civilization at Macleavo. He said good bye to Rostom
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  Speaker 1: and took the train. And it was with a return
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  Speaker 1: to the conditions of modern life that the reaction set
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  Speaker 1: in and stirred the deeper layers of consciousness to reproduce
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  Speaker 1: their store of magic. For this return to what seemed
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  Speaker 1: the paltry activities of an age of missionary, physical luxury
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  Speaker 1: and superficial contrivances brought him a sense of pain that
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  Speaker 1: was acute and trenchant. More, a deep and poignant sense
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  Speaker 1: of loss. The yearnings, no longer satisfied, began again to
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  Speaker 1: reassert themselves. It was not the actual things the world
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  Speaker 1: seemed to busy about that pained him, but rather the
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  Speaker 1: point of view from which the world approached them, those
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  Speaker 1: that it deemed with one consent important, and those with
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  Speaker 1: rare exceptions it obviously deemed worth no consideration at all,
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  Speaker 1: and ignored. For himself these values stood exactly reversed. The
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  Speaker 1: vision then came back to him, rose from the depths,
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  Speaker 1: blinded his eyes with maddening beauty, sang in his ears,
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  Speaker 1: possessed his heart and mind. He burned to tell it.
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  Speaker 1: The world of tired, restless men, he felt, must equally
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  Speaker 1: burned to hear it. Some vision of her simple life,
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  Speaker 1: lived close to nature came before his inner eye as
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  Speaker 1: a remedy for the vast disease of restless self seeking
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  Speaker 1: of the age, the medicine that should cure the entire vault.
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  Speaker 1: A return to nature was the first step toward the
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  Speaker 1: great deliverance men sought, And most of all, he yearned
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  Speaker 1: to tell it. First to Heinrich's tall to hear him
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  Speaker 1: talk about it as he talked, perhaps to me alone,
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  Speaker 1: was genuinely pathetic. For here in Terence O'Malley I thought
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  Speaker 1: to see the essential futility of all dreamers, nakedly revealed
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  Speaker 1: his vision was so fine, sincere and noble, his difficulty
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  Speaker 1: in imparting it so painful, and its marriage with practical
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  Speaker 1: action so ludicrously impracticable. At any rate, that combination of
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  Speaker 1: vision and action, called sometimes genius, which can shake the world,
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  Speaker 1: assuredly was not his, For his was no constructive mind.
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  Speaker 1: He was not intellectual, he saw, but with the heart
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  Speaker 1: he could not build. To plan a new utopia was
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  Speaker 1: as impossible to him as to shape even in words,
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  Speaker 1: the splendor he had known and lived. Bricks and straw
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  Speaker 1: could only smother him before he laid what most would
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  Speaker 1: deem foundations at first two in those days, while waiting
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  Speaker 1: for the steamer at bottom, he kept strangely silent, even
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  Speaker 1: in his own thoughts. Was silence. He could not speak
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  Speaker 1: of what he knew, Even paper refused it. But all
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  Speaker 1: the time his glorious wing thing that yet was simple
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  Speaker 1: as the sunlight o'er the rain went by his side,
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  Speaker 1: while his soul knew the relief of some divine, proud
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  Speaker 1: utterance that he felt could never know complete confessional speech
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  Speaker 1: or writing. Later, he stammered over it to his note
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  Speaker 1: book and to me, and partially also to doctor Stall.
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  Speaker 1: But at first he dwelt alone and hidden, contained in
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  Speaker 1: this deep silence. The days of waiting he filled with
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  Speaker 1: walks about the streets, watching the world with new eyes.
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  Speaker 1: He took the Russian steamer to Portee and tramped with
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  Speaker 1: anapsack of the Charow Gorge beyond Bodka. Regardless of the
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  Speaker 1: Turkish gypsies and encampments of wild peoples on the banks,
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  Speaker 1: the sense of personal danger was impossible. He felt the
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  Speaker 1: whole world kin That sense protected him. Pistol and cartridges
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  Speaker 1: lay in his bag, forgotten at the hotel. Delight and
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  Speaker 1: pain lay oddly mingled in him. The pain he recognized
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  Speaker 1: of old. But this great, radiant happiness was new. The
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  Speaker 1: nightmare of modern, cheap, jacked life was all explained, unjustified
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  Speaker 1: of courts, as he had always dimly felt symptoms of
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  Speaker 1: deep disorder, all due this feverish external business to an
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  Speaker 1: odd misunderstanding with the earth. Humanity had somehow quarreled with her,
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  Speaker 1: claiming an independence that could not really last for her.
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  Speaker 1: The centuries of this estrangement were but a little thing,
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  Speaker 1: perhaps a moment or two, in that huge life which
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  Speaker 1: counted a million years to lay a narrow bed of chalk.
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  Speaker 1: They would come back in time. Meanwhile, she ever called
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  Speaker 1: a few, perhaps already dreamed of return. Movements he had
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  Speaker 1: heard were afoot a tentative endeavor. Here and there they
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  Speaker 1: heard these view the splendid whisper, that sweetly calling ever
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  Speaker 1: passed about the world. For a voice in the last
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  Speaker 1: resort was more potent than all others, an enchantment that
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  Speaker 1: never wholly faded. Men had but temporarily left her mighty
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  Speaker 1: sights and gone astray, eating of trees of knowledge that
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  Speaker 1: brought them deceptive illusions of a mad self intoxication, fallen
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  Speaker 1: away into the pains of separateness and death. Loss of
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  Speaker 1: direction and central control was the result the babble of
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  Speaker 1: many tongues, so clumsily invented, by which all turned one
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  Speaker 1: against another, insubordinate artificial centers that assumed disastrous command. Each
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  Speaker 1: struggled for himself against his neighbors. Even religions fought to
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  Speaker 1: the blood. A single sect could damn the rest of humanity,
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  Speaker 1: yet in the same breath, sing complacently of its own heaven. Meanwhile,
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  Speaker 1: she smiled in love and patience, letting them learn their lesson. Meanwhile,
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  Speaker 1: she watched, waited, while like foolish children they toiled and
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  Speaker 1: sweated after futile, transient things that brought no single letter
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  Speaker 1: of content. She let them coin them millions from their
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  Speaker 1: fairest thoughts, the gold and silver in her veins, and
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  Speaker 1: let them turn it into engines of destruction, knowing that
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  Speaker 1: each life lost return into arms and heart, crying with
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  Speaker 1: the pain of its wayward foolishness the lesson learnt. She
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  Speaker 1: washed their tears and struggling just outside the open nursery door,
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  Speaker 1: knowing they must at length return for food. And while
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  Speaker 1: thus waiting, watching, she heard all prayers that reached her.
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  Speaker 1: She answered them with love and forgiveness, ever ready. And
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  Speaker 1: to the few who realized their folly naught in as
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  Speaker 1: perhaps at worst it was this side of death, she
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  Speaker 1: brought full measure of peace and joy and beauty. Not
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  Speaker 1: permanently could they hurt themselves, for evil was but distance
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  Speaker 1: from her side. The ignorance of those who had wandered
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  Speaker 1: furthest into the little dark labyrinth of her separated self
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  Speaker 1: they were so proud of, had misled them. And sometimes
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  Speaker 1: here and there across the ages, with a glory that
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  Speaker 1: refused utterly to be denied, she thundered forth an old,
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  Speaker 1: sweet message of deliverance, through poet, priest or child. She
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  Speaker 1: called children home. The summons rang like magic across the
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  Speaker 1: ways of the steery, separated existence. Some heard and listened,
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  Speaker 1: some turned back, Some wondered and were strangely thrilled. Some,
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  Speaker 1: thinking it too simple to be true, were puzzled by
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  Speaker 1: the yearning and the tears, and went back to seek
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  Speaker 1: for a more difficult way, while most, denying the secret
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  Speaker 1: glory in their hearts, sought to persuade themselves. They loved
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  Speaker 1: the strife and hurrying fever best. At other times, again,
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  Speaker 1: she chose quite different ways and sent the amazing message
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  Speaker 1: in a flower, a breadth of evening air, a shell
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  Speaker 1: upon the shore, though ofteners, perhaps it hid in a
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  Speaker 1: strain of music, a patch of color on the sea
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  Speaker 1: or hills, a rustle of branches, and a little twilight wind,
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  Speaker 1: a whisper in the dusk or in the dawn. He
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  Speaker 1: remembered his own first visions of it, while he never
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  Speaker 1: could the summons come to our children through the intellect.
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  Speaker 1: For this it was that led them first away, A
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  Speaker 1: message enters ever by the heart, the simple life. He
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  Speaker 1: smiled as he thought of the bald utopias here and
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  Speaker 1: there devised by men. For he had seen a truth
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  Speaker 1: whose brilliant smote his eyes, too dazzlingly to permit of
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  Speaker 1: the smallest corner of darkness. Remote, no doubt in time
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  Speaker 1: that day when the lion shall lie down with the lamb,
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  Speaker 1: and men shall live together in peace and gentleness, when
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  Speaker 1: the inner life shall be admitted as a reality. Strife
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  Speaker 1: gain in loss unknown, because possessions undesired, and pity self
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  Speaker 1: wood merged in the larger life. Remote, of course, yet
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  Speaker 1: surely not impossible. He had seen the face of nature,
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  Speaker 1: heard a call, tasted a joy and peace, and the
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  Speaker 1: rest of the tired world might do the same. It
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  Speaker 1: only waited to be shown the way. The truth he
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  Speaker 1: now saw so dazzlingly was that all who heard the
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  Speaker 1: call might know it for themselves at once carasped with
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  Speaker 1: shining love that makes the whole world kin, the earth,
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  Speaker 1: the mother literally divine each soul. Thus provide a channel
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  Speaker 1: along which the Summon's home should pass across the world,
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  Speaker 1: to live with nature and share a greater consciousness on
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  Speaker 1: root for states, yet greater nearer to the eternal home.
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  Speaker 1: This was the beginning of the truth, the life, the
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  Speaker 1: way he saw religion all explained, and those hard sayings
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  Speaker 1: that make men turn away, the imagined dread of losing
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  Speaker 1: life to find it, the counsel of perfection that the
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  Speaker 1: neighbor shall be loved as self, the fancied injury and
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  Speaker 1: outraces that made it hard for rich men to enter
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  Speaker 1: the kingdom. For these, as of a hundred other sayings,
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  Speaker 1: he saw the necessary truth. It all seemed easy now
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  Speaker 1: the world would see it with him. It must it
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  Speaker 1: could not help itself. Simplicity as of a little child,
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  Speaker 1: and selflessness as of the mystic. These were the splendid clues.
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  Speaker 1: Death and the grave indeed had lost their victory. For
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  Speaker 1: in the stages of wider consciousness, beyond this transient physical pace,
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  Speaker 1: he saw all loved ones joined and safe, as separate
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  Speaker 1: words upgathered each to each in the apparent sentence that
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  Speaker 1: explains them, the sentence in the paragraph, the paragraph, in
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  Speaker 1: the whole grand story, all achieved, and so at length
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  Speaker 1: into the eternal library of God that consummates the whole.
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  Speaker 1: He saw the glorious series timelessons said in advancing to
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  Speaker 1: the climax, and somehow understood that individuality at each stage
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  Speaker 1: was never lost, but rather extended and magnified. Love of
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  Speaker 1: the earth, life close to nature, and denial of so
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  Speaker 1: called civilization was a first step upwards in a simple life.
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  Speaker 1: In this return to nature lay the opening of the
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  Speaker 1: little path that climbed to the starts and heaven. The
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  Speaker 1: end of chapter thirty nine