Chit-Chat; Nirvana; The Searchlight Part 26

Within an hour, three priests of our order, the death watch, took up their abode in my chambers, which I was not permitted to leave, and this watch was continued to the end.

On the next day the body of the queen arrived from Men-nefer and I was directed to complete the embalming already begun. This occupied a fortnight.

The day the embalming was completed Rahotep came to my chamber and, sending the guards from the room, said:

"On the morrow at sunrise you will be strangled to death, after which your body will be delivered to me for disposition. When it is carefully embalmed I shall place it in a new tomb in the temple of Amun and it shall become sacred to him. The tomb is so constructed that light and air penetrates through slits in the portal and it may be entered from the temple by members of our order. Amun will permit your soul to occupy and grow in your mummied body. You have said you are not afraid of death. Neither you nor any other man knows what lies beyond. It is not the end of things as you declare but the beginning of the thought life.

Living through the ages in your old sh.e.l.l you shall learn that the infinite is the author of all things and from the order and harmony of nature you shall deduce the existence of G.o.d and the immortality of the soul. You shall learn that the soul is an immaterial being which can go where the body can not and can live where the body cannot live and is so sometimes punished. That its controlling force is not the body nor even the mind but a power which pervades all s.p.a.ce, which has existed from the beginning, looking after the universe and each creature therein.

This is the infinite, the beginning, the end of all things, which, lacking a better name and light to discern, I call Amun, The Great, The Only One. The wind has not a body, yet you know the wind blows; light has not substance, yet you feel and see it and know it comes from the worlds in the skies. Your soul has existed from the beginning as a part of the infinite. It came into existence as the angels of light and darkness. It is of the size of the faith that is in you and yours is quite small. Yours shall grow during the ages, as Amun is about to begin its experience, which each soul is to have, though the experience given each is different, being judged and punished or rewarded according to the light given, which in every case is dim. You are first to be turned over to Phtha, the great father of beginnings. Your little seed of a soul, a.s.suming the form of a beetle, shall remain in your mummified body. Your embalming robes shall be decorated with his sign, the scarabeus. Your body will be carefully watched by our priesthood to observe the growth of your soul and know that you finally believe in its existence and the infinite power of G.o.d. You shall pa.s.s through the valley of humiliation, living as the Chelas live upon your own soul.

Your suffering shall bring improvement and growth until your soul shall prove sufficient unto itself, since it shall know G.o.d and itself.

Finally it shall part company with your mummied body and become a part of the light of the world."

I arose at daylight the next morning and, after carefully bathing, rubbed my whole body with a preparation for closing the pores; then, retiring to a couch, drank a vial of most precious and potent embalming fluid, which, knowing death to be near, I had secreted when preparing the mummy of the queen.

I felt a contraction of my stomach, an icy chill, a gradual though rapid cessation of consciousness and being. For what period I know not I slept the sleep of death.

Sluggishly in my dead frame fluttered a something. For days or years, I know not, there was a mere sense of spiritual life or being and a fluttering of body as of a small numbed insect; was it a scarabeus? This was succeeded in time by an acuter consciousness, when I saw my puny soul in its bare weakness.

Then began the journey through the valley of humiliation and suffering, when soul lived upon and thought only of self and its escape. Through ages of suffering and loneliness and blackness, my only thought was a constant prayer for absolute non-existence. Within the heart of my tiny soul there began to grow a germ-like conception and reverence for G.o.d.

With this thought the soul seemed to take unto itself strength to make feeble efforts to tear a way through its coffin of flinty skin and in feeble flight bounded and pounded incessantly on its case of parchment, as a drummer on his drum, with a ceaseless, monotonous, drum, drum, drum.

Finally, through the mummy eyes, there seemed to come dim rays of light.

Then the feeble soul stationed itself immediately behind them and prayed only for light. And, after a thousand years, enough light was given to see crevices in the tomb and s.h.i.+fting grains of sand drift through. Life before had been so bare that the mere seeing of the flight of a grain of sand into that place of utter calm and monotony was as an angel visit to the disconsolate of earth.

Now the all-absorbing desire was for more light; for freedom to break through the prison walls of flinty skin and have one peep at earth and sun. Then, remembering how I had stolen our most potent embalming fluid and used it on my own body, I attributed continued imprisonment to its preservative properties and looked upon myself as my own jailer.

As the soul grew, reason discarded this thought and fixed upon my imprisonment as punishment for disbelief. Seemingly, ages went by; the soul pa.s.sed through a period of great remorse; remorse grew to repentance, and repentance to hope and faith.

Then my soul seemed to fill the whole mummied frame and gained strength until it acquired the power of motion. I could s.h.i.+ft position and look out upon the valley of Aur-Aa, now called Nilus, where, as time pa.s.sed, I saw the maturity and wane of Egyptian power and the iron hand of Rome reach out in conquest.

The vandal hand of a conquering Roman tore loose the stone portal of the tomb, and mummy and imprisoned soul were carried across the great sea and with other husks of former life exhibited in the triumph of Octavius; then placed in a museum to be gazed upon by the curious of Rome.

One night robbers broke into the room, thinking the dead carried their treasures with them, and unwound our grave cloths. My soul pounded and tore at its case, hoping pantingly that they might break the parchment sh.e.l.l; but all they did was to remove a string of turquoise and porphyry beetle-shaped beads. When morning came the mummies were rewrapped and returned to the exhibit slab.

As the crowds pa.s.sed by, if one, perchance, looked into my sunken eyes, the soul, watching hungrily beneath, looked out with an intensity and read his very inmost mind and most secret thought; and some there were who seemed to know the meaning of my look.

When I read thoughts of doubt, such as I had known in life, I sought with utmost soul strength to convey to them some warning and some hope; and as I struggled thus, there came rifts of light into my prison as from a higher life.

One day a n.o.ble Roman youth came strolling by with a companion and, stooping, gazed upon my form.

"See, Marcus! How much better preserved this man of ancient Egypt is than the others. Look! In his sunken eyes you may discern a glimmer as of intense life; of consciousness; I feel his look, as though he read me through and through and would speak in advice or warning."

"Oh! Come on! You have eaten too heavily or else departed from your stoical way and conscience has made you uneasy; else you could not attribute life to this foul sh.e.l.l, dead these three thousand years."

"I shall return alone tomorrow when the light is better and have a good look."

At noon the next day, when the sunlight rested on my slab, the youth returned and, bending over my black parchment face, peered into the hollow eye holes; and in some weird way I held communion with him. When he left, my soul seemed to go along, a companion of his own.

Lost in thought, he walked a long way into the poorer quarter of the city, where there was much squalor and suffering. He was aroused by the cries of women and children driven from their squalid homes by a band of Nero's condottieri, who then set fire to their deserted hovels.

He rushed to their rescue, remonstrating with the soldiers. They refused to desist, telling him that the people were of the new sect, the Christians; and their orders were to burn them out. He was a.s.saulted by them, resisted, killed two and was himself slain.

His soul as a great white bird, with a brilliancy as of the sun, left his body and flew heavenward. My own returned to its mummied chamber.

But the chamber had been reformed; it was of many hued crystal, of expansive wall and gave forth a light all its own. I settled upon a couch and drifted into a restful peace.

My own soul became as the tabernacle of G.o.d. All tears were wiped away by the conqueror of sorrow and pain and death. I had found the Father; the Father a son; and I entered into the place where G.o.d is the Light.

In the meantime Rome burned. The fire, started by Nero's soldiers near the Palatine Hill, spread from house to house and quarter to quarter until it reached my couch. The old sh.e.l.l parted and burned as tinder.

Then the mortal put on immortality and the shackled darkness of the old soul gave place to light and liberty.

I awoke. It was near twilight; the world seemed new and fresh, but it was the old home place.

I bent over and examined my couch; it was the old slab shelf of the springhouse. Looking along its raised edge, which I had used as a pillow, I noticed for the first time crude strange characters or letters cut in the stone.

That night I asked my father the history of the slab. He said he had brought it from the Stoner Creek farm near Wade's Mill, where it had been plowed up in cultivating over a small Indian mound.

I came to the conclusion the slab possessed weird properties, making it a restless and unsatisfactory couch, and thereafter I called it the dream bench.

DOCTOR BROWN OF DANVILLE.

Incidentally I took up stenography, its usefulness having been impressed upon me by my inability to transcribe the narrative of the feeble-minded black boy.

The winter following his death, attending law school at the University of Virginia, I continued its study and practice and found it quite an aid in jotting down the lectures. By the following summer I had grown to be quite an efficient stenographer.

That summer, shortly after I had my disturbing dream as a priest of Osiris, the Kentucky synod of the Southern Presbyterian Church met at Winchester. My mother, a member of the First Presbyterian Church, entertained two of the visiting preachers, both of whom were personal friends of Doctor Chisholm. One was from the western portion of the State, I believe Owensboro, the other, Doctor Brown, of Danville.

Doctor Brown rarely smiled; his poise was indicative of the utmost self-control, his form lank, his hair heavy and graying at the temples, his general appearance giving evidence of a clean, active ascetic life and a strong moral and physical make-up. He was inclined to keep the light of his conversational powers under a bushel, and at times spoke only when aroused from apparent self-centered thought. His voice was deep and pleasant, his diction and expression perfect, his thoughts, clothed in finished sentences, were entertainingly expressed and at times exhibited a rich vein of the choicest humor. He was the leading member of the conference--certainly the brainiest--and it fell to his lot to deliver the most important address of the gathering.

He seemed to fancy the old springhouse, its quiet coolness and the spreading elms. Except at mealtime he did all his drinking from its cool fountain and out of the old gourd dipper, though mother insisted on sending a gla.s.s down for his service.

Several times I found him sitting in the rustic chair by the door jotting down notes for some address or sermon, but never seated on the old stone bench.

On Monday at breakfast, following a busy Sunday, on which he had preached two exceptionally good sermons, and, following the noonday service, greeted lengthily and cordially seemingly every member of the large congregation, I noticed his usually active manner had given place to a languorous calm.

So I went down to the springhouse, carried the rustic chair into the open beyond the shade and carefully loosened and removed one of the legs, placing the chair in such a position as to show it was unserviceable and undergoing repairs; then I returned to the house.

In about an hour Doctor Brown left the library for the springhouse, carrying a couple of books and a scratch pad under his arm.

When he saw the condition of the chair he walked within and found a seat on the old stone bench. After resting for some time he stretched his form on the cool smooth slab and was soon fast asleep.

Then I slipped in and preparing for business, sat down upon the floor with note book and pencils handy, heading the page with the name of our distinguished guest.

He began in a conversational tone what was apparently an introductory address to a gathering of primitive Christians. It was in Greek, which I was able to transcribe.

The translation undoubtedly is faulty, robbed of the thought and beauty of his smooth diction, and gives but imperfect meaning and interpretation to many idiomatic expressions.