He broke off. Then he continued: “Our new faith, for which we have now chosen the name of Abraxas, is beautiful, my friend. It is the best we have. But it is still a nestling. Its wings have not yet grown. Alas, a lonely religion, that is not yet the true one. It must become an affair of many, it must have cult and orgy, feasts and mysteries....”
He was sunk in reflection.
“Can one not celebrate mysteries alone, or in a very small circle?” I asked hesitatingly.
“Yes, one can,” he nodded. “I have been celebrating them for a long time past. I have celebrated cults for which I should have been imprisoned for years in a convict station, if they had been found out. But I know it is not the right thing.”
He suddenly clapped me on the shoulder, making me jump. “Young friend,” he said impressively, “you also have mysteries. I know that you must have dreams of which you make no mention to me. I don’t wish to know them. But I tell you: Live them, these dreams, play your destined part, build altars to them! It is not yet the perfect religion, but it is a way. Whether you and I and a few other people will one day renew the world remains to be seen. But we must renew it daily within us, otherwise we are of no account. Think over it! You are eighteen, Sinclair, you don’t go with loose women, you must have love-dreams, desires. Perhaps they are such that you are frightened by them! They are the best you have! Believe me! I have lost a great deal by doing violence to these love-dreams when I was your age. One should not do that. When one knows of Abraxas, one should do that no more. We should fear nothing. We should hold nothing forbidden which the soul in us desires.”
Frightened, I objected: “But you can’t do everything which comes into your mind! You can’t murder a man because you can’t tolerate him.”
He pressed closer to me.
“There are cases where you can. Only, generally it’s a mistake. I don’t mean that you can simply do everything which comes into your mind. No, but you shouldn’t do injury to those ideas in which there is sense, you shouldn’t banish them from your mind or moralize about them. Instead of getting oneself crucified or crucifying others, one can solemnly drink wine out of a cup, thinking the while on the mystery of sacrifice. One can, without such actions, treat one’s impulses and one’s so-called temptations with esteem and love. Then you discover their meaning, and they all have meaning. Next time the idea takes you to do something really mad and sinful, Sinclair, if you would like to murder someone or to do something dreadfully obscene, then think a moment, that it is Abraxas who is indulging in a play of fancy. The man you would like to kill is never really Mr. So and So, that is really only a disguise. When we hate a man, we hate in him something which resides in us ourselves. What is not in us does not move us.”
Never had Pistorius said anything to me which went home so deeply as this. I could not reply. But what moved me most singularly and most powerfully was that Pistorius in this conversation had struck the same note as Demian, whose words I had carried in my mind for years and years past. They knew nothing of one another, and both said to me the same thing.
“The things we see,” said Pistorius softly, “are the same things which are in us. There is no reality except that which we have in ourselves. For that reason most people live so unreally, because they hold the impressions of the outside world for real, and their own world in themselves never enters into their consideration. You can be happy like that. But if once you know of the other, then you no longer have the choice to go the way most people go. Sinclair, the road for most people is easy, ours is hard. Let us go.”