I have done with suffering.... During all these long days and nights, I have not shed one tear. I do not suffer now: the agony-delirium has passed those limits, beyond which no difference is felt between joy and misery, beyond which there is no night of woe, that contrasts with day.
In the still autumn twilight, I am shut up in my dark and lonely room. Lest I should awake my soul, that has fallen asleep, I am pacing the soft carpet with noiseless steps.
I am in terror of the very movements which I myself make. Trembling with cold—or is it with my own emptiness of heart?—and leaning against my doorway in the darkness, wrapped in the folds of my soft shaggy portière, I open my swooning lips to utter a soundless cry, and look staring into the mobile fluttering dark with tired and quiet gaze.
I do not suffer; I exist—in a world wherein the night of woe no longer is a contrast with day, wherein there prevails a tranquil dusk, without sun and without stars.
There is no Ego of mine. I am beyond existence and beyond nothingness—in that world wherein dies the immemorial conflict between dream and vigil; where Wrong, robed in her queenly purple, is no longer shadowed by Vengeance, in her pallid green attire; where stony Hatred no longer hugs in her fierce embrace the weeping god of love; where the marble statue of Pride no longer renders homage to the grim spectre, Fear; wherein there are no more wretched victories, nor the portentous delights of worshipping oneself and the Power of Self!
No, there is no more any Ego of mine.... I am in a world to which even the unlimited fields of Infinity cannot reach, for it was everlastingly beyond all limits. I am in a world in which Duration neither flows nor stands still; wherein Solitude is not, though neither are there spirits to commune with; where there is only no solitude, because there is no Me.
Do I suffer? No. I am in a world where I have no being.
I could well die, if I chose: but my body, well-favoured as it is, would fain not part from my bright, though mournful soul. Therefore am I willing to live.
But there is nought for which I can any longer care; I dwell in a world which my soul is never to behold: for when Death comes, my soul’s existence will be over.
Yet not because nothingness is there. To believe that there is nothingness, one must indeed have an intense power of faith. I cannot bring myself to accept the creed of nothingness. For in the world where I am now, neither Being is, nor Non-Being; there is neither the Ego nor the Non-Ego; nor has the soul ever laid her icy hand upon the body: I am in a world wherein there is no soul of mine.