He is seven, restless as the sea, and just as full of mysteries. Many
times I have felt a strong spirit in the body, a healer, a great lover,
a dear and compassionate comrade. For a time Tom meant India to me.
I could see the blue hills and the wide dusty roads, the cows coming
home through the dusk, and the little Indian mothers bringing food and
their babies to the feet of a withered, white old man in a big Sannysin
robe. Always I seemed one of the mothers, and Tom the master. I used
to sit at his feet when he was very small, and listen carefully to his
wandering, yet deep and wise words. He seemed to unfold many things to
me about myself, and in that way helped me as a teacher would, though
he did not know.
For a while Tom's quest was in healing--his small hands were always
laid upon our hurts, serious eyes staring upwards. It seemed to awaken
the past in his soul. Gradually his bent turned to other things. When
we went to the country to live, he saw Nature for the first time. Tom
was very much at home with the old Mother. He loved the living things
that most children fear; the bees and beetles, the blind little beings
that live in the earth and the small, red-tongued garter-snakes. He
often spoke of a life he had lived with the snakes--of the big ones
that used to love him and curl around his neck. I never could help
shuddering a little at the thought, but Tom would explain, "They won't
hurt you if you love them. Then they will love you too. Snakes feel
just what you feel--if you're afraid of them, they get mad."
Again I would think of India--the great cobras that sit before a pure
master, opening their hoods to listen to his chanting. Tom knew what
purity meant, a deep-down purity like the earth itself. Why should
anything hurt him?... He used to hold the bees in his hands and walk
through a cloud of double-winged beetles with utmost carelessness. Many
times he has led me through a cloud of them, murmuring, "They won't
hurt you." Once he disturbed a honeybee in the late afternoon, drunken
and senseless on the fragrant flowers. It stung him. He shook it off
his hand and said in a disgusted voice, "That wasn't my bee!"
A little later Tom discovered the Unseen of Nature. I mean that it
ceased to be the unseen to him. The fairies opened their mysterious
arms, and we saw little of him for a time, so lost was he in their
wonder. There was a small rock in the front yard that he used to sit
on when he was looking for them. The busy brown gnomes appeared to
him first--often rolling pebbles down the cliff, or gathering leaves
in their little aprons. Then the tree-nymphs would come to him; so
green and fresh and sweet--with bright eyes and coaxing hands. He
would follow laughingly what they said and did, always explaining to
us later what they _meant_. And he saw the spirits of the water, far
out over the lake, mingled with the sunlight. They gave him much, he
said, but he would like to have gone out to them. He said that burning
wood unlocked the fire fairies--let them out into freedom and light.
He loved to build fires on the beach, watching carefully the leaping
and spreading of the flames. The salamanders were responsible for the
spreading, he thought, and used to watch their little red hands at
work. His eyes seemed to melt as they stared so far and deeply into
things--way past the _seen_ into that which is nothingness to most of
us. And he would come back slowly as though it were hard to detach
himself from the enchantment. Always we kept very still at such a time,
for fear we hurry him.
Out of the magic and mystery of that summer, out of the warm nights
full of stars and peace, and the days of sunlight spent with the
beckoning fairies, Tom's soul unfolded another big quest. The fairies
were only the start of the Unseen, though we thought at the time that
he saw all that a human being could. At last the Master's voice reached
his open ears. He answered immediately.
It began with old Indian philosophy. He heard certain reading in the
Study one day, and later asked for the book. It was a little book,
written in words of one syllable by a Hindu boy, telling how to reach
the Feet of the Master. The next morning I found him on his knees
before it in the sunlight. At that time Tom was just learning to read.
It was hard for him, but he wanted to be alone with the spirit of it.
He handed me the book saying, "Please read this page aloud to me."
The young Master was speaking of Discrimination and Onepointedness.
Tom's face filled with the wonder of one who has found the thing he
has been wanting for a very long time--for ages perhaps. He said, "If
you asked me to go and get you a book, and I went, but instead of
bringing the book back to you, I took it to the shore and commenced
to read, forgetting that you wanted it, that would be the opposite of
onepointedness, wouldn't it?" A little later, he said:
"The Master watches you from the hills, all the way up. He knows all
that you do. When you do small things, you are taking Him away from
yourself; you are not being the _Soul_. Each time you do something
great and brave, the Master comes a step nearer. When you become your
soul, the Master comes all the way down the hill and tells your brain
which way to go--tells you the path, the way home. _Then_ you have
earned it. You have got to earn everything, everything that comes to
you.... I think that the Master comes and takes you away at night,
shows you many things--tries to help you. But pain has to teach the
brain, and pain is the lack of soul. It hurts your soul to have you
suffer. It hurts the Master too, but they both know that you are
learning to be their comrade through your pain."
Tom paused. In his eyes there was that wonderful melting again, and a
joy so deep and pure that it made my heart sing.
"It is all meant," he added. "All is meant, but men do not know that
the Master is watching. For ages and ages the Master waits so patiently
for his _friend_ to come."
"His friend?" I asked.
"Yes. Souls are always comrades. The Master is greater than you are
only because he has been longer on the path. He started before you did.
He has come up through all that we have. Just think how long my Master
has been waiting for me, and I have not even found Him yet."
I looked at the little body of him, at the innocence of the eyes and
mouth, all untouched by the world--so pure and yet crying out in pain
because he had taken so long on the quest.... His eighth year brought
Tom into regular boyhood. The young brain, always before silently
giving way to intuition, began to speak for itself. This stage is as
important perhaps, but not so beautiful as when the hushedness and
glowing of the Unseen touches a child. Here we turned from Tom, and the
things that creep into the heart of almost every boy of the same age,
crept into Tom's heart. He forgot the fairies--they ceased to call. He
forgot the wide roads of peace and purity. He seemed to forget that the
Master was still waiting so patiently on the hill for him to open and
receive. But we knew better than that.
The development of the brain always robs a child of the inner glowing
for a time, but it all comes back again with a great dimension added;
the instrument is then keen and direct--a power in itself. We turned
from Tom--a young brain standing alone, very conscious of itself,
is anything but interesting. At the time we were in the turmoil of
departure, each of us thinking in different ways about the long journey
just ahead, and the wonder of being at last in California. Tom was more
or less his own director those days.
He fell into crime, looted the house of a friend, denied everything. He
was sent to his quarters to stay until he found himself again. It took
a week exactly, but he found a deep happiness in being alone in the
little room before he left it. It did him as much good as the long days
in the sunlight ever could; he came out pale and wide eyed, and the
breath of a soul was in the room when he entered.
One day out of his long week, I went to him. The sun had gone down
behind a nest of grey clouds. Dusk had almost deepened into darkness,
but there was no light in his room. He sat there, his eyes staring
ahead of him, his hands folded tightly in his lap. I walked in quietly
and sat down beside him. I was not even noticed; he was lost in his
thought. At last I asked,
"Tom, what did you find so interesting in that cheap business?"
"I haven't found out yet," he said grimly.
"Have you been thinking about it?"
"Sure have. Been thinking all day."
"Has nothing come?"
"No, but it's coming soon. It can't take long if I stay here like this,
wishing and pulling every minute."
"Of course it can't."
He continued to stare into the darkness ahead.
"What does it feel like, Tom?" I asked.
"Your soul leaves you.... Your soul won't stay if you are going back."
"Going back?"
"Yes. I mean if you have been big and listened to its voice, and then
stop. If you are _less_ than yourself after you've been _more_, your
soul won't stay."
"What do you do when your soul leaves you?"
"You walk the Black Path."
He looked a child seraph.
"That path is not interesting, is it?"
"No. You have got to know what it is, got to walk up it a little ways,
so that you are not afraid of it any more. When you know a thing, you
are not afraid of it any longer. Before you know, it looks all dark to
you. Nothing can hurt you when you are not afraid.... It's just the
same as with the animals. All the black things that come into you are
animals. If they find nothing but love and whiteness inside, they will
go away and not even look at you again; but if fear and darkness are
there, they get mad and bite."
Leaning forward with a laugh, he added, "You can't cut across from the
black path to the white. You've got to go all the way back and start
over."
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