“Did you ever hear of the double vision?”
For this is a subject on which the spiritually learned men of India,
like the great mystics of all the faiths, have much to say. I had
listened with bewilderment and doubt to the expositions of my Pandit
on this very head. Her simple words seemed for a moment the echo of his
deep and searching thought. Yet it surely could not be. Impossible.
“Never. What does it mean?” She raised clear unveiled eyes. “You must
forgive me for being so stupid, but it is my mother who is at home with
all these scientific phrases. I know none of them.”
“It means that for some people the material universe--the things we see
with our eyes--is only a mirage, or say, a symbol, which either hides
or shadows forth the eternal truth. And in that sense they see things as
they really are, not as they seem to the rest of us. And whether this is
the statement of a truth or the wildest of dreams, I cannot tell.”
She did not answer for a moment; then said;
“Are there people who believe this--know it?”
“Certainly. There are people who believe that thought is the only real
thing--that the whole universe is thought made visible. That we create
with our thoughts the very body by which we shall re-act on the universe
in lives to be.
“Do you believe it?”
“I don’t know. Do you?”
She paused; looked at me, and then went on:
“You see, I don’t think things out. I only feel. But this cannot
interest you.”
I felt she was eluding the question. She began to interest me more than
any one I had ever known. She had extraordinary power of a sort. Once,
in the woods, where I was reading in so deep a shade that she never
saw me, I had an amazing vision of her. She stood in a glade with the
sunlight and shade about her; she had no hat and a sunbeam turned her
hair to pale bronze. A small bright April shower was falling through the
sun, and she stood in pure light that reflected itself in every leaf and
grass-blade. But it was nothing of all this that arrested me,
beautiful as it was. She stood as though life were for the moment
suspended;--then, very softly, she made a low musical sound, infinitely
wooing, from scarcely parted lips, and instantly I saw a bird of azure
plumage flutter down and settle on her shoulder, pluming himself there
in happy security. Again she called softly and another followed the
first. Two flew to her feet, two more to her breast and hand. They
caressed her, clung to her, drew some joyous influence from her
presence. She stood in the glittering rain like Spring with her birds
about her--a wonderful sight. Then, raising one hand gently with the
fingers thrown back she uttered a different note, perfectly sweet and
intimate, and the branches parted and a young deer with full bright eyes
fixed on her advanced and pushed a soft muzzle into her hand.
In my astonishment I moved, however slightly, and the picture broke up.
The deer sprang back into the trees, the birds fluttered up in a hurry
of feathers, and she turned calm eyes upon me, as unstartled as if she
had known all the time that I was there.
“You should not have breathed,” she said smiling. “They must have utter
quiet.”