None, indeed, but a poor unfortunate human being clothed in rags who sat at the door of her hut under the brow of the hill. Being out of sight, and dull of hearing, and a Taoist priestess withal, this poor soul, sincere and true in her faith, told her followers she had heard the Good Spirits talking in the air above her.
“In a strange language,” she said, “but clear and sweet. I knew it was the Good Spirits—and I called: ‘Buddha! Buddha! O Sakya! take me from existence! O Sakya Muni!’”
He who ever listens, heard them both.
XXXV
HIMALAYA CATHEDRAL BY THE SUPREME ARCHITECT
ADELE’S idealization was correct. The inquisitive explorers found themselves face to face with nature in one of the Creator’s own Temples, where the good and true and the beautiful were embodied in a place made for worship by the Creator. A Cathedral whose architecture was appropriate and soul-stirring (æsthetic) even unto sublimity; and beyond man’s capacity to appreciate fully. A Cathedral whose vaulting was the heavens above, its floor the earth beneath, and its religious life as profound as the depths under the earth. And as the sequel proved, our travelers were also to find all types of worship there, existing even unto this day in this Temple of the Lord; from the early sacrifice to the latest enlightenment—the Divine Light of the World.
“Why so? Why all this? Upon what ground scientific, philosophical, moral and religious? Freedom obtained—Life in the open—the open life—physically, intellectually, spiritually. The Truth as each man saw it was able to make him free.”
The sense of the beautiful, the artistic sense, first asserted itself in this particular group of Nineteenth Century inquisitives. They were accustomed to temples made with hands in which art had striven to express the truth; here in this scene they found it rising through all gradations of beauty, and realized that in nature we have the mother source of truth and beauty in architecture. Of course, they first noticed and criticised as seeing with the eyes of their own civilization. What did they see? Lines as studied, yet free, as in any masterpiece of Greece or basilica of early Christianity, as full of aspiration, arching heavenward, as any Gothic work of later day. And not only this; they soon recognized other forms, outlines marked in character as a Hindoo Temple or Burmese Pagoda, peculiar as a Chinese Tower or Japanese Torii—pure and chaste as the Moslem Taj Mahal. They were astounded at the many forms, originally obtained direct from nature or suggested by natural forms, which had been subsequently conventionalized by art. Evidently all sorts and conditions of men had at one time or another sat at the feet of the Supreme Architect.
Then they observed more critically.
The growth stood upon basal lines, founded upon the earth itself, plain areas; then massive foundation rocks; terraces to suit the location; knolls to accentuate the demands of perspective; spurs to act as buttresses and bind together the rising masses; hills to invite one to ascend higher; mountains towering towards the realm of the unseen. The work suggesting solidity, firmness, and all the essentials for majesty dominating heavenward. The elementary design simple in form, simple in combination, simple even as a Chaldean or Egyptian monumental pyramid, Tomb, Library or Portal; as straight and as true as a Persepolis House of Prayer; as flat and as positive, and yet as significant and as symbolic as any Parsee devotee of old, or a Mason from the days of Solomon, would have chosen to signify Basic Truth in Religion or Simple Life in Morality—the simplicity of the Gospel of Architecture.
A palpable fact began to manifest itself, namely: that man never did learn anything worth knowing unless he came to nature to see and perceive, to observe how the lilies of the field were arrayed, and how the mountains towered heavenward to Our Father who Art, to Him who is Art—the Way, the Truth, the Beautiful; and this was not only visible to the eye, but the Cathedral was resonant—it spoke. There was heard the very Voice of the Creator Architect, the Mind of Nature; and the sound thereof echoed to the ends of the Earth. The great instruction had been given, learned practically, and practiced.