Isn't it terrible about that elephant at the Zoo
-- Oh, you know! -- it's like Gunga Din, only,
of course, it isn't Gunga Din at all.
Anyhow, he's CHAINED FOR LIFE! I suppose some-
one gave him tobacco for a joke and it made him
cross. I've heard of those cases, haven't you?
An elephant is such a -- such a -- well, NOBLE beast,
isn't he?
It's transmigration of souls makes them that way,
perhaps.
Oh is it a Rajah?
Anyhow, it sits on top of an elephant.
We took up transmigration of souls one time --
our little Group of Serious Thinkers, you know --
and it's wonderful; simply WONDERFUL!
That was when the Swami Brandranath used to
talk to us. The dear Swami! Such eyes -- so pure
and yet so magnetic! -- I have never seen in a human
being.
The eye is the window of the soul, you know.
He's in jail now, the poor, dear Swami. But he
wasn't really a bigamist at all. You see, he had
seven spiritual planes. All of us do, only most of
us don't know it. But he could get from one plane
to another quite easily.
Of course, he couldn't remember what he'd done
on one plane while he was on the next one above
or below it. And that's the way he happened to
have seven wives -- one for each spiritual plane.
Only the Court took a sordid view of it. It seems
there was something about life insurance mixed
up with it, too.
The Occidentals are so apt to miss the spiritual
sweetness of the Oriental, don't you think?
We are -- all but the Leaders of Thought, and a
little group, here and there -- so commonplace.
Don't you LOATHE the commonplace?
Not loathe, really, of course -- because the harmonious
mind does not let itself be disturbed.
The harmonious mind realizes that dirt is only
useful matter in the wrong place, as Tennyson sings
so sweetly somewhere.
Tennyson has quite gone out, of course. He is
so -- so, well, if you get what I mean -- so mid-
Victorian, somehow.
It seems he WAS mid-Victorian all the time, but
it's only recently that it's been found out on him.
Though I always will think of "come Into the
Garden, Maud," as one of the world's sweetest
little epics.
I'm very independent that way, in spite of the
critics. After all, criticism comes down to a question
of individual taste, doesn't it? That is, in the
final analysis.
Independence! That is what this age needs.
Nearly every night before I got to bed I say to myself:
"Have I been independent today? Or have I FAILED?"
I believe in those little spiritual examinations,
don't you?
It helps one to keep in tune with the Infinite, you
know.
The Infinite! How much it comprises! And
how little we really understand it!
We're going to take it up, the Infinite, in a serious
way soon -- our Little Group of Advanced
Thinkers, you know.