I could not see even his eyes now. Arima was an invisible presence.
“In Japan,” he said, “in connection with jujutsu and otherwise we recognize a strange force which we call kiai, a very powerful dynamic. We consider it a manifestation of the primal energy. It lies all round us for the taking by anyone who will use the necessary means and in itself is neither good nor evil. The result depends on the person who uses it. What the Abbot Gyōsen passed into your mind was certain of the first rules of this knowledge. We call them the Rules of Detachment. He must have been conscious that you have reached the fit stage for instruction.”
“Then all I can say is that he was entirely mistaken. He could hardly choose a worse subject for any spiritual experiments than myself.”
Arima laughed slightly but kindly as one laughs at a child’s ignorant certitude.
“That is not possible. Men of his sort are not mistaken. But you mistake. Certainly this force may be employed for a very high kind of spiritual adventure, but in itself it is neutral. It is only a force, and what he foresees for you I cannot tell. It is a sword. Now a sword may be employed by a god or a devil or any of the grades between.”
This idea was so new to me that I said nothing for a moment, revolving the thing inwardly.
“Can you mean that a force of tremendous possibility lies about us for anyone to use who will? That a man can handle the powers of miracle——”
He shook his head:
“There is no miracle. There is only Law and some of us understand it better than others. Knowledge is always power and the unscrupulous may know as well as the saints. But they will know from a different and disastrous angle. Does one always see power in worthy hands? You and I who have lived through the war know better than that. No, this force is applicable to small things as to great. It can mean success in money-grubbing or the open door to an apostleship. As I said—it is a sword. But it cannot be trifled with. It carries you to a stage where you perceive the danger too late and are seized with an indescribable horror. The wings melt in the sun’s flame, and then——”
He made an eloquent gesture with his hand which suggested a fall from some unimagined height.