“In Japan,” he said, “in connection with jujutsu and otherwise we
recognize a strange force which we call _kiai_, a very powerful dynamic.
We consider it a manifestation of the primal energy. It lies all round
us for the taking by anyone who will use the necessary means and in
itself is neither good nor evil. The result depends on the person who
uses it. What the Abbot Gyōsen passed into your mind was certain of the
first rules of this knowledge. We call them the Rules of Detachment. He
must have been conscious that you have reached the fit stage for
instruction.”
“Then all I can say is that he was entirely mistaken. He could hardly
choose a worse subject for any spiritual experiments than myself.”
Arima laughed slightly but kindly as one laughs at a child’s ignorant
certitude.
“That is not possible. Men of his sort are not mistaken. But _you_
mistake. Certainly this force may be employed for a very high kind of
spiritual adventure, but in itself it is neutral. It is only a force,
and what he foresees for you I cannot tell. It is a sword. Now a sword
may be employed by a god or a devil or any of the grades between.”
This idea was so new to me that I said nothing for a moment, revolving
the thing inwardly.
“Can you mean that a force of tremendous possibility lies about us for
anyone to use who will? That a man can handle the powers of miracle——”
He shook his head:
“There is no miracle. There is only Law and some of us understand it
better than others. Knowledge is always power and the unscrupulous may
know as well as the saints. But they will know from a different and
disastrous angle. Does one always see power in worthy hands? You and I
who have lived through the war know better than that. No, this force is
applicable to small things as to great. It can mean success in
money-grubbing or the open door to an apostleship. As I said—it is a
sword. But it cannot be trifled with. It carries you to a stage where
you perceive the danger too late and are seized with an indescribable
horror. The wings melt in the sun’s flame, and then——”
He made an eloquent gesture with his hand which suggested a fall from
some unimagined height.
“I won’t believe it,” I said resolutely. “That whatever rules the
universe should trust it anywhere to clumsy or wicked interference— No,
impossible!”
“Yet we see it daily,” Arima replied calmly. “But things always come
right in the long run. This power of which I speak is only one gesture
of the Supreme and there is much behind it. Illusions pass like clouds
but the sun remains.”
“But—but,” I hesitated.
“It is this which explains the mystery of good and evil, as we call
them. Think it out and you will see. Shall we go in now? I have a fancy
that the processes of the night—even the river—like to be free of us
intruders. If we are not in harmony with them——”
“Arima!” I said on an impulse, “have you this secret? I think—I know
that in your hands it would be safe. What you have said makes me long
for more. If the Abbot judged me fit for so much—and you say he must
have known——”
He stretched his hand in the moonlight and grasped mine in a strong
clasp. I had a sensation of something throbbing and beating from his
wrist to mine. It flowed tingling along my veins until it was warm about
my heart.
“It is day!” he said.
I heard no more. It was day. A fierce sun blazed upon me and I was alone
in an unknown country. A mountain, in contour like the famous Fuji,
loomed up majestic, snow spilt down its sides like the sticks of a half
opened fan. I stood in a mighty gorge beside a fiercely running mountain
river, the swift torrent forced back by its own speed among the rocks in
curling white waves. Where two rocks craned forward to each other from
opposing shores a noble Chinese bridge, huge stones gigantically moulded
almost to a semi-circular spring, spanned and bridled the wild creature
beneath, and on either shore was a willow tree.
Why was it familiar though so strange? But I stood bewildered. A moment
ago I had been beside my friend in moonlight and quiet, now a great sun
beat on tossing mountains and river, and I was alone.
Terribly alone. I stood ignorant which way to turn, helpless, baffled,
in a place which might have been empty from the world’s beginning, but
for the bridge. Would anyone ever come? Should I roam there imprisoned
in vastness until I died? It was a nightmare of terror. I ran to the
great willow as if for refuge in its tent of delicate shifting shade,
and pushing aside the boughs I entered and sat down throwing my arm
about the trunk, smooth, warm, as the flesh of a woman, that I might
steady myself against something living and tangible.
There are Dryads in Japan, tree spirits, and especially do they haunt
the willow. Beautiful, alarming, some of the stories, but always
instinct with the life which lies just below our horizon. Now I was
conscious of some presence beside me, not to be accosted until its own
moment of choice. I put out my hand instinctively; it met nothing. I
said a word aloud. No answer. And again most disabling fear submerged
me. Then, clear and small, as if written, the Rules of Detachment rose
in my mind, and hurrying, I repeated them under my breath, not knowing
how they could help, but catching at anything.
“I have no parents. I make the heavens and the earth my parents. I have
no strength. I make submission my strength.” And so to the end.
“I have no sword. I make the sleep of the mind my sword.”
Now, as I said these words the meaning flashed upon me in light. Here
was I—alone in a frightful solitude—so desolate that it might have
been the Mountains of the Moon. What means of escape could I make for
myself? What friends had I—what sword? The Rules assured me. The
enemies—the mountains, the wild ways, were my slaves if I could believe
it. In submission strength awaited me. In the surrender of the plotting
reason, which can only break tangible material obstacles, my latent
powers would function. And what were they?
Once more and confidently I repeated the words, knowing that they
unloosed some hard-bound knot in my being. I willed to be in the garden
of Arima. My one instinct was flight.
I was sitting beneath the willow tree— Yes, but in Arima’s garden, and
he was beside me looking steadfastly at the river where moonlight flowed
away with it to the ocean.
Impossible to describe the shock of relief. It never occurred to me to
ask if I had been asleep—to think I had been hypnotized or anything of
the kind. I knew the experience was real.
“Where have I been?” That was the only possible question. He replied:
“In the garden. Did you not recognize it? See—the mountain, the tumbled
rocks, the river and bridge. _But_ in the garden as my ancestor first
saw it. Some day you shall hear why.”
“But first—first— Was I long there? Time—I forgot time.”
“You are there now, only the blinkers are over your eyes again. And as
to time—there is no such thing as time. There is only eternity. If I
count in the way we measure when we wear our blinkers you had the sight
for twenty-four hours. It was last night when it began. Now it is
to-night. I have slept, have eaten, have walked to the village and
written many letters and all the time you sat here. Time is really
nothing but a dream—a necessity in the world of the Three Dimensions.
As soon as you break the shell—it is nothing.”
Again I cannot describe the tumult of feeling in me, mingled with a
passionate longing for something of my own lost and ravished from me. I
had a sense of unutterable weakness and shame. He read my thought like
speech and answered:
“But you threw it from yourself. You were frightened, forlorn, and you
caught at the Rules and concentrated, and being power they acted as you
wished, and transported you back into the blindness of the daily life
that walls us in from the Lovely, the Utterly Desirable.”
“You mean,” I said slowly, “that one can ruin oneself as easily as save.
And that I should not have come back at my own will?”
“Exactly. One must always go on. To come back is highly dangerous. If
you had had patience and had concentrated upon what is called
‘extension’ you would have climbed the mountain and on the other
side——”
“What? What?” I cried, for he paused.
“We call it the Shining Country. You would have—liked it! Also you
would have met the One who Waits.”