“Yes.”
“And don’t you see that what that results in is the Hindoo thing, the abolishing of consciousness, the abolishing of life—of individual life?”
“Yes, I see that,” Gavan smiled, “but I’m a little surprised to see that you do. So many people are like Aunt Barbara.”
But Eppie was pushing, pushing against the closed doors and would not be lured away by lightness. “Above all, Gavan, do you see that he is merely an illogical Hindoo when he tries to bridge his abyss with ethics? On his own premises he is utterly fatalistic, so that the very turning from the evil illusion, the very breaking down of the barrier of self, is never, with him, the result of an effort of the will, never a conscious choice, but something deep and rudimentary, subconscious, an influx of revelation, a vision that sets one free, perhaps, but that can only leave one with emptiness.”
Above all, as she had said, he saw it; and now he was silent, seeking words that might rid him of pursuit, yet not infect her.
She had stopped short before his silence. Smiling, now, on the background of mist, her eyes, her lips, her poise challenged him, incredulous, actually amused. “Don’t you think that I have an identity?” she asked.
He was willing at that to face her, for he saw suddenly and clearly,—it seemed to radiate from her in the smile, the look,—that he, apparently, couldn’t hurt her. She was too full of life to be in any danger from him, and perhaps the only way of ending pursuit was to fling wide the doors and, since she had said the word, show her the emptiness within.
“You force me to talk cheap metaphysics to you, Eppie, but I’ll try to say what I do think,” he said. “I believe that the illusion of a separate identity, self-directing and permanent, is the deepest and most tenacious of all illusions—the illusion that makes the wheels go round, the common illusion that makes the common mirage. The abolishing of the identity, of the self, is the final word of science, and of philosophy, and of religion, too. The determinism of science, the ecstatic immediacy of the mystic consciousness, the monistic systems of the Absolutists, all tend toward the final discovery that,—now I’m going to be very glib indeed,—but one must use the technical jargon,—that under all the transitory appearance is a unity in which, for which, diversity vanishes.”
Eppie no longer smiled. She had walked on while he spoke, her eyes on him, no longer amused or incredulous, with an air now of almost stern security.
“Odd,” she said presently, “that such a perverse and meaningless Whole should be made up of such significant fragments.”