Many interesting things appear in these dictations provided Tom's helper effaces himself sufficiently to permit the boy to forget externals. The remaining pages of this chapter is a sketch of Tom's case written by the Little Girl[13] who furnishes an interesting surface of understanding for the complications of this lad. Incidentally her own development is one of the big winnings of Stonestudy work. The Little Girl is now fourteen and this essay will show something of her awakening:
Tom
He is seven, restless as the sea, and just as full of mysteries. Many times I have felt a strong spirit in the body, a healer, a great lover, a dear and compassionate comrade. For a time Tom meant India to me. I could see the blue hills and the wide dusty roads, the cows coming home through the dusk, and the little Indian mothers bringing food and their babies to the feet of a withered, white old man in a big Sannysin robe. Always I seemed one of the mothers, and Tom the master. I used to sit at his feet when he was very small, and listen carefully to his wandering, yet deep and wise words. He seemed to unfold many things to me about myself, and in that way helped me as a teacher would, though he did not know.
For a while Tom's quest was in healing—his small hands were always laid upon our hurts, serious eyes staring upwards. It seemed to awaken the past in his soul. Gradually his bent turned to other things. When we went to the country to live, he saw Nature for the first time. Tom was very much at home with the old Mother. He loved the living things that most children fear; the bees and beetles, the blind little beings that live in the earth and the small, red-tongued garter-snakes. He often spoke of a life he had lived with the snakes—of the big ones that used to love him and curl around his neck. I never could help shuddering a little at the thought, but Tom would explain, "They won't hurt you if you love them. Then they will love you too. Snakes feel just what you feel—if you're afraid of them, they get mad."
Again I would think of India—the great cobras that sit before a pure master, opening their hoods to listen to his chanting. Tom knew what purity meant, a deep-down purity like the earth itself. Why should anything hurt him?... He used to hold the bees in his hands and walk through a cloud of double-winged beetles with utmost carelessness. Many times he has led me through a cloud of them, murmuring, "They won't hurt you." Once he disturbed a honeybee in the late afternoon, drunken and senseless on the fragrant flowers. It stung him. He shook it off his hand and said in a disgusted voice, "That wasn't my bee!"
A little later Tom discovered the Unseen of Nature. I mean that it ceased to be the unseen to him. The fairies opened their mysterious arms, and we saw little of him for a time, so lost was he in their wonder. There was a small rock in the front yard that he used to sit on when he was looking for them. The busy brown gnomes appeared to him first—often rolling pebbles down the cliff, or gathering leaves in their little aprons. Then the tree-nymphs would come to him; so green and fresh and sweet—with bright eyes and coaxing hands. He would follow laughingly what they said and did, always explaining to us later what they meant. And he saw the spirits of the water, far out over the lake, mingled with the sunlight. They gave him much, he said, but he would like to have gone out to them. He said that burning wood unlocked the fire fairies—let them out into freedom and light. He loved to build fires on the beach, watching carefully the leaping and spreading of the flames. The salamanders were responsible for the spreading, he thought, and used to watch their little red hands at work. His eyes seemed to melt as they stared so far and deeply into things—way past the seen into that which is nothingness to most of us. And he would come back slowly as though it were hard to detach himself from the enchantment. Always we kept very still at such a time, for fear we hurry him.
Out of the magic and mystery of that summer, out of the warm nights full of stars and peace, and the days of sunlight spent with the beckoning fairies, Tom's soul unfolded another big quest. The fairies were only the start of the Unseen, though we thought at the time that he saw all that a human being could. At last the Master's voice reached his open ears. He answered immediately.
It began with old Indian philosophy. He heard certain reading in the Study one day, and later asked for the book. It was a little book, written in words of one syllable by a Hindu boy, telling how to reach the Feet of the Master. The next morning I found him on his knees before it in the sunlight. At that time Tom was just learning to read. It was hard for him, but he wanted to be alone with the spirit of it. He handed me the book saying, "Please read this page aloud to me."
The young Master was speaking of Discrimination and Onepointedness. Tom's face filled with the wonder of one who has found the thing he has been wanting for a very long time—for ages perhaps. He said, "If you asked me to go and get you a book, and I went, but instead of bringing the book back to you, I took it to the shore and commenced to read, forgetting that you wanted it, that would be the opposite of onepointedness, wouldn't it?" A little later, he said:
"The Master watches you from the hills, all the way up. He knows all that you do. When you do small things, you are taking Him away from yourself; you are not being the Soul. Each time you do something great and brave, the Master comes a step nearer. When you become your soul, the Master comes all the way down the hill and tells your brain which way to go—tells you the path, the way home. Then you have earned it. You have got to earn everything, everything that comes to you.... I think that the Master comes and takes you away at night, shows you many things—tries to help you. But pain has to teach the brain, and pain is the lack of soul. It hurts your soul to have you suffer. It hurts the Master too, but they both know that you are learning to be their comrade through your pain."