The sun was above the trees when he spoke, turning the serenity of his face upon me.
“You have learnt your lesson. Has it brought content?” I summoned my thoughts to reply clearly.
“I have learnt much but the truth I do not know. Does the corpse still lie on the moor and the woman weep in the deserted house. Am I guilty?”
“In your soul, yes. Therefore in truth, yes. When you yielded to lust in your heart and willed murder both were accomplished. Your own Scriptures teach this and that thought is the only true reality. This have all the Buddhas known. In what men ignorantly call fact you are not guilty. But, being guilty, learn this. Every instant terminates a life and the next is a new birth. While each minute exists the past is dead and the future unmade. I speak here according to the knowledge of this world, but the truth is that there is no time, and that you are now what the Divine sees you—a ray of his splendour. This truth being as yet too high for you to remember that even on this world’s showing you are free to be what you will. The choice lies before you. With a thought you may be in the horror of the Desolate Country, with another in the Shining Land. For every man makes his own universe until he can see it as it is in the Thought of the Divine.”
Blinded with truth I asked a question simply as a child.
“Then what must I do?”
“Resolve and go forward,—what else? knowing that in yourself is all power.”
“But the training? Free me from myself! If we can realize these powers the means of using so terrible a weapon rightly should be open to all.”
“It is open. But men will not believe. They will not will. They do not think, and events take them like sea-weed on a wave. You know your own weakness but it is strength compared with that of the majority. You, at least, have seen and heard. Study the teachings of the perfect One, the Buddha, if you would be a man. Realize your union with Power, knowing that it is a harp of many strings of which you are one, and tune yourself in harmony with the music of the spheres. At present you are a man without a sword.”
That phrase! It kindled a world of recollection. I looked into his face with another entreaty.