Can we enjoy it all by ourselves? Will there be no sense of incompleteness if the many are outside, missing it all because they missed their End? Will the glory make us glad if they are somewhere far away from it and God? Will not heaven be almost an empty place to one who has never tried to fill it? Yet there is room, oh so much room, for those we are meant to bring in with us!
And there is room, oh so much room, along the edge of the precipice. There are gaps left all unguarded. Can it be that you are meant to guard one of those gaps? If so, it will always remain as it is, a falling-point for those rivers of souls, unless you come.
Are these things truth or are they imagination? If they are imagination—then let the paper on which they are written be burnt, burnt till it curls up and the words fall into dust. But if they are true—then what are we going to do? Not what are we going to say or sing, or even feel or pray—but what are we going to do?
The ceremonial bathing. They are all old women, but the very oldest old woman in India bathes most vigorously. After this bathing is over, they are purified from the defilement contracted by going to the house of the dead.
CHAPTER VII
"The Dust of the Actual"
"This may be counted as our richest gain, to have learned afresh one's utter impotency so completely that the past axiom of service, 'I can no more convert a soul than create a star,' comes to be an awful revelation, so that God alone may be exalted in that day."