The Green Face (25 page)

It was only now that Sephardi fully understood Egyolk’s
words, “As long as the lights within him have not been changed
round, everything a man believes is wrong, however correct it
might be, so completely wrong that it is beyond comprehension.
You think you are giving, and instead you are taking; you think
you are standing still and waiting, whereas instead you are travelling, searching.”

Weeks passed, but nothing was heard of Eva. Mill and
Sephardi heard the terrible news from Hauberrisser and did
everything humanly possible to find her, soon every available
wall was covered with descriptions of the missing woman and
appeals for information, so that the case quickly became common gossip among both locals and tourists.

In Hauberrisser’s flat there was a constant coming and going,
people crowded outside the house and foreach one that left, two
more entered; everyone claimed to have found something
which could well have belonged to the missing woman, for there
was a large reward offered for the least bit of news of her.

Rumours that she had been seen here or there spread like
wildfire, anonymous letters, written by malicious or deranged
citizens, accused innocent people of having abducted Eva, of
holding her captive; mediums offered their services by the
dozen; clairvoyants that no one had ever heard of popped up
claiming powers they did not possess: the soul of the teeming
city which, until then, had seemed harmless enough, revealed
itself in all its baseness, with its lust for gossip and gold, its
self-importance and petty vengeance.

Some of the reports had a ring of truth, and Hauberrisser,
tossed between hope and despair, spent hours chasing round
with the police, checking houses where someone had said Eva
was being kept. Soon there was no street, alley or square in
which, misled by false information, he had not turned one or
more houses upside down in his search for Eva. It was as if the
city were taking its revenge on him for his earlier indifference.

In his dreams at night he saw the faces of the hundreds of
people he had spoken to during the day, all screaming at him that
they had news of Eva, until they dissolved into an amoeba-like
grimace, as if a mass of transparent photographs were piled on
top of each other.

His only comfort during these dreary weeks and months was
the fact that Swammerdam came to see him early each morning.
Even though he brought nothing new, even though he shook his
head every time Hauberrisser asked him whether he had heard anything about Eva, the old man’s unshakeable confidence gave
him the strength to face the trials of each new day. No mention
was made of the roll ofpapers, and yet Hauberrisser felt that that
was the main reason why Swammerdam came to visit him. One
morning, however, the old man could restrain himself no longer.
He did not look at Hauberrisser as he spoke,

“Do you still not realise that a horde of hostile, alien thoughts
is attacking you, is trying to make it impossible for you to reflect
calmly on matters. If it were a swarm of angry wasps defending
their nest against you, you would know what it was straight
away and take action; why do you not defend yourself against
the cloud of hornets destiny has sent buzzing round your soul?”

He stopped abruptly and went out.

Ashamed of his inaction, Hauberrisser pulled himself
together. He wrote a note for the housekeeper to fix to the door,
saying that he had gone away and that any communications
concerning the case of Eva van Druysen should from now on be
sent to the police. That was not enough, however, to restore his
inner calm; every five minutes he had to repress the desire to go
and tear the note down.

He took out the roll and tried to compel himself to read, but
after every line his thoughts wandered off to Eva and when he
tried to force them to concentrate on the paper, they whispered
to him that it was foolish to waste his time poring over musty
parchments full of abstruse theories when every minute was
screaming for action.

He was about to put the document back in his desk when he
was so overcome with a sudden and strong feeling that he was
being duped by some invisible power, that he stopped a moment
for reflection. Actually, it was more listening than reflection:

`What is this strange, enigmatic power’, he wondered, `that
seems so innocent and conceals its separate existence from me
by behaving as if it were my own inner self, and makes my will
choose the opposite of what I decided to do a moment earlier?
I want to read and yet am not allowed to?’ He leafed through the
pages, and every time he came across a difficulty in making
sense of their contents, the insistent thought returned, `Leave it
alone; you don’t know where to start; it’s a waste of time’, but he set a sentinel outside his will and barred the entry to the
thought. His old habit of observing himself slowly started to
reassert itself.

`If I only knew where to start!’ Self-deception reared its head
once more, giving a hypocritical sigh as he mechanically turned
the pages, but this time the sheaf of papers itself provided the
right answer. He started reading a sentence at random and gave
a gasp of surprise at the coincidence that he should light on
precisely these words:

“The beginning is what men lack. It is not that it is so difficult
to find it; the great obstacle is the delusion that we must seek it.
Life is merciful; every moment it grants us a beginning. Every
second brings the question, `Who am IT, but we do not ask it,
and that is the reason why we cannot find the beginning.

But when we once ask it in earnest, then the day will dawn
which by evening will see the death of those thoughts that have
broken into the command centre and suck the blood of our souls.

Like a colony of industrious polyps, they have, over the millennia, built up a reef where they live and move and have their
being: we call it `our body’; first of all we must make a breach
in this reef of flesh and bone and then dissolve it back into the
spiritual essence it was at the very beginning, if we want to
escape out into the open sea. Later I will teach you how to make
a new shell from the remains of the reef.”

Hauberrisser put the page down for a moment to reflect. He
was not in the least interested in whether this page was the copy
or draft of a letter that the author had sent to someone; he was
gripped by it as if it were directed at him alone and that was the
spirit in which he intended to read it.

One thing in particular struck him: what was written down
here sounded almost like a speech, sometimes from the lips of
Pfeill or Sephardi, sometimes from Swammerdam’s. He realised now that all three of them breathed the same spirit as this roll
of papers exuded, and that, in order to make a true man of the
tiny, helpless, worldweary Hauberrisser, the stream of time was
making them almost into double figures.

“But now hear what I have to say to you:

Arm yourself for the time that is to come!

Soon the world’s clock will strike twelve; the number on its
dial is red, is dipped in blood, and by that you will recognise it.

And a stormwind shall precede the new first hour.

Be watchful, that you are not sleeping when it comes, for
those that cross over into the new dawn with their eyes closed
will for ever be the animals they were before; never more can
they be wakened.

There is a spiritual equinox and the new dawn of which I
speak is the turning point when the Light shall be equal to the
Darkness.

For a thousand years and more men have learnt to understand
the laws of nature and put it to their service. Happy are they that
have understood the meaning of this labour, namely that the
spiritual laws are the same as the physical laws, only an octave
higher, for they shall enjoy the fruits of their labour whilst the
others continue to toil, their faces turned towards the earth.

The key to power over spiritual nature has been rusting since
the flood. It is: wakefulness.

Wakefulness is all.

Man thinks himself secure in his belief that he is watchful and
yet, in truth, he is caught in a net he has woven himself from
sleep and dreams. The more closely meshed the net, the stronger
the power of sleep; those that are caught in it are they that sleep,
that go through life like the lamb to the slaughterhouse, unknowing, uncaring, unthinking.

The dreamers among them see the world split into segments
by the meshes of the net; all they see are misleading scraps and
they act upon them, not knowing that these images are merely
meaningless parts of a mighty whole. These `dreamers’ are not,
as perhaps you think, the poets and visionaries, but the active
ones of the earth, never idle, never resting, eaten up with the
worn of industry; they are like busy, ugly beetles climbing up
a smooth pipe: when they reach the top, they fall into it.

They think they are awake, but in reality their life is all a
dream, a dream that is predetermined down to the last iota, and
that they cannot influence at all.

There were - and there still are - a few among men who knew
very well that they were dreaming, pioneers who reached the ramparts, behind which the eternally wakeful spirit is hidden:
visionaries such as Goethe, Schopenhauer and Kant. But they
did not possess the weapons necessary to stone the stronghold,
and their war-cry did not wake the sleepers.

Wakefulness is all.

The first step towards it is so simple that any child can take
it; only the over-educated have forgotten how to walk and are
lame in both feet because they refuse to let go of the crutches
they inherited from their forefathers.

Wakefulness is all.

Be watchful in all that you do. Think not you are already so.
No, you are asleep and dreaming.

Stand firm, gather up yourthoughts and force yourself forone
single moment to send the sensation coursing through every
fibre of your body, `now I am awake.’

If you manage to feel that, then you will recognise that before
you were drugged with sleep.

That is the first, faltering step on the long road from slavery
to omnipotence.

It is the road I take and each new awakening takes me farther
forward.

It gives you power over all thoughts that torment you; they
are left behind and cannot reach you; you tower above them, as
the crown of the tree soars above the dry brushwood round the
bole.

When you reach the stage where the wakefulness takes hold
ofyourbody as well, pain will drop away from you like withered
leaves.

The ice-cold baths of the Jews and Brahmins, the night-long
vigils of the disciples of Buddha and the Christian ascetics, the
tortures the Indian fakirs underwent to stop themselves falling
asleep, they are all externalised rites; like fragments of columns,
they tell the searcher here in the dim and distant past stood a
mysterious temple to wakefulness.

Read the sacred books of the peoples of the earth: like a
thread running through them all is the hidden teaching of
wakefulness. It is the ladder of Jacob, who wrestled for the
whole `night’ with the Angel of the Lord until the `day’ came and he prevailed over him.

Sleep, dream and stupor are the armoury of Death; if you
would overcome Death, you must ascend rung by rung into
ever brighter states of wakefulness.

The very lowest rung of this ladder, that reaches up to
heaven, is called `genius’; what names shall we find for the
higher ones! They are unknown to the common mass of
people, they are assumed to be legends. But the story of Troy
was for centuries thought to be a legend, until finally someone found the courage to dig.

The first enemy you meet on the road to wakening will be
your own body. It will fight you until the first cockcrow; but
if you should see the dawn of eternal wakefulness, which will
remove you from the company of the eternal somnambulists,
who believe they are men and know not that they are sleeping
gods, then for you the sleep of the body will be gone and the
universe will be subject to you.

Then you will be able to perform miracles, if you want; no
longer will you be like a snivelling slave, awaiting the pleasure of a cruel idol, to reward you or to chop off your head.

There is, though, one comfort that will be denied you: the
comfort of the faithful, tail-wagging hound, who knows he
has a master whom it is his privilege to serve; but ask yourself, would you, as the man you are now, change places with
your dog?

Do not let yourself be put off by the fear of failing to reach
your goal in this life. Anyone who has once started out on our
road will keep coming back to earth on an inner journey which
will permit him to continue his work: he will be reborn as a
`genius’.

The path that I show you is strewn with miraculous experiences: dead friends you knew during your life will rise again
before you and talk with you. They are but images! Beings of
light, wreathed in a blissful radiance, will appear to you and
bless you. They are but images, formed of the exhalations of
your body as, under the influence of your transformed will, it
dies a magic death and turns from matter into spirit, just as
the hard ice, under the influence of heat, dissolves into ever changing cloud-shapes.