The Dedalus Meyrink Reader

by Gustav Meyrink

  But the Masked Figure had me completely in his power, his will was stronger than mine. For a while he disappeared from view or, to be more precise, changed his form; at such times it was as if I could see his ‘face’. That lasted for years. During that time the interpreter, life, spoke to me through books which often came into my hands in such strange ways that I couldn’t shake off the feeling that an invisible schoolmaster had taken charge of my education. And every time a book on yoga was sent to me, I thought I had finally found the key to the secrets I was longing for. It had very quickly become clear to me that yoga, that strange, profound educational system of the Asiatic peoples, and not the philosophical theories of the thinkers and sages, was the sole road to a superhuman existence. Chance — fate travelling incognito, as a Russian once called it — gave me books that said so. I also came into contact with people who seemed to know more about yoga than the scholars who were learned in Indian writing. Whenever I heard the name of someone who appeared to be an initiate in these matters, I wrote to them, I hunted for them as if they must possess the elixir of life. I was gripped by an obsession: find them, find them, find them. I could write volumes about my experiences with such ‘initiates’. In order to find a certain Captain Searle of the Anglo-Indian Marine Survey who, I had been told, was the disciple of a hathayogi (fakir) and could calm typhoons by repeating certain mantras, I sent several dozen letters to Australia, America, England, India and China. When one of them finally reached its goal, Captain Searle had died a week previously.

  I joined the Theosophical Society, founded a lodge in Prague and went round roaring like a lion to recruit members; I gave talks to a small group from English siftings and pamphlets. The only lasting reward for all my efforts was that I eventually acquired an ability in what you might call sight-translation, so that today I can read out aloud from an English book as if it were in German. Annie Besant rewarded me for my zeal by accepting me into a certain inner circle, the centre of which is in Adyar in India. I received a number of letters from her with instructions about yoga. From that moment until my resignation from the Society some three months later I led the life of a man who was almost mad. I existed on nothing but vegetable matter, hardly slept at all, ate a tablespoon of gum arabic dissolved in soup twice a day (it had been most warmly recommended to me by a French occult order for the purpose of awakening astral clairvoyance) performed asana exercises (Asiatic sitting positions with crossed legs) for eight hours night after night, at the same time holding my breath until I was shaking fit to die. Then, at the new moon, I rode out in complete darkness to a hill well outside Prague, known as the Cave of St Procopius, tethered my horse to a tree, sat in the asana position and stared at a point in the sky until it began to grow light. The instructions for all this, insofar as they had not come from Annie Besant herself, I had extracted from books of Indian or medieval provenance. And whenever my faith was threatening to collapse and I was beginning to despair, some second-hand bookseller would send me a catalogue of books on yoga, magic and the like which I had not yet come across and which buoyed me up with more false hopes.

  One winter’s night, when the snow was so deep it was impossible to ride out to my hill, I was sitting on a bench by the Moldau. Behind me was an old bridge-tower with a large clock. I had already been sitting there for several hours, wrapped up in my fur coat, but still shivering with cold, staring at the greyish-black sky, trying everything possible to attain what Mrs Besant had described to me in a letter as inner vision. In vain. From earliest childhood I had been surprisingly devoid of the faculty many people possess of being able to close their eyes and imagine a picture or a familiar face. It was, for example, quite impossible for me to say whether one or other of my acquaintances had blue, brown or grey eyes, dark or brown hair, a straight or curved nose, if I had had not previously looked at it specifically to ascertain that. In other words, I used to think in words, not in images. I had sat down on this bench with the firm resolution of not getting up again until I had succeeded in opening up my inner vision. My model was Gautama Buddha who had once sat under the bo tree with a similar resolution. Of course, I only stuck it out for about five hours and not, like Him, for days and nights. Suddenly I wondered what time it was. Then, just at the moment when I was being torn from my contemplation, I saw, with a sharpness and clarity with which I could not remember ever having perceived any object before in my life, a huge clock shining brightly in the sky. The hands showed twelve minutes to two. It made such a profound impression that I clearly felt my heart — not miss a beat, no: beat extraordinarily slowly. As if a hand were gripping it tight. I turned round and looked at the tower clock, which until then had been behind me. It is completely out of the question that I should have turned round earlier and thus got some idea of what time it was, for I had sat on the bench for five hours motionless, as is the strict requirement for this kind of concentration exercise. The clock, just like the one I had seen in the sky in my vision, showed twelve minutes to two.

  I was overjoyed. There was just one faint worry: would my ‘inner eye’ stay open? I started the exercise again. For a time the sky remained greyish-black and closed, as it had been before. It suddenly occurred to me to see if I could make my heart beat in as calm and controlled a manner as it had done of its own accord when I had had the vision, or possibly, most probably even, before the vision. This did not occur to me the way things usually do, rather it was like a dimly perceived deduction or instruction from the sense of one of the Buddha’s sayings which came to me as if from the invisible lips of the ‘Masked Figure’. The saying was, ‘Things come from the heart, are born of the heart and subject to the heart.’ In that night this saying penetrated deep into my blood. It is not just a beautiful axiom, which one can appreciate as such when reading it and let it go in one ear and out of the other, no, it is the essence of a whole philosophy: the realisation that everything we think we perceive here on earth and in the material cosmos as existing objectively outside us is not material, but a state of our own self. This saying is also the subtle key to true magic and does not consist merely of theoretical knowledge. Often in my life when I thought I was lost it has helped me, like a strong hand held out in support. When, many years later, I fell 1,000 feet from the Dent du Jaman, it came into my mind at the moment when txt]I first hit the ground, with my left shoulder, and managed to twist my body and thus change the direction of my fall, with the result that I didn’t eventually land in a quarry, but in a gully full of soft snow. Was it the Buddha’s saying that saved me? Was it that that gave me the flash of inspiration: turn your body! Who could say for certain? But it does seem to me that that was the case.

  I sat on the stone bench and stared at the sky again. Finally I managed to bring my heart to the state of calm it had previously been in. The result was immediate. It was as if a circular piece of the night sky were receding, as if it were coming away from the atmosphere and retreating into more and more immeasurable depths of space. As it was happening, I observed myself as clearly as I could and it soon became clear to me that the sole purpose was that I should make the line of vision of my two eyes parallel. At the same time I recalled reading that sleepwalkers in a state of trance always looked as if their gaze were fixed on the distance. It was not long before I had not only achieved a degree — a small degree, but still sufficient — of control over my heart, but also over the direction of my gaze and this was immediately followed by something I had never seen before in my life: geometrical shapes formed in the round hole in the sky. The first sign was the so-called in hoc signo vinces: a cross within a capital ‘H’. I looked at it coolly, as if uninvolved, without a trace of conceit or anything like that. Which was quite natural, since even in those days I had very little time for Christian ecstasies. It was merely as an ‘observer’ that I was interested to see this particular time-honoured sigil leading out the procession of my visions. Then other geometrical figures made their appearance, some of them similar to the magic signs you see in medieval Fa
ust books. All of them were colourless. It was only much later that I saw images, bright and colourful pictures, often Greek statues, for example Pallas Athene.

  All these images had one main thing in common: they were so sharp, so bright and in such glorious colour that the things of this earth seemed pale and blurred. However difficult it might be to understand, sometimes I could see them from all sides at the same time, as if my inner eye were not a lens, but a circle drawn round the visionary image. Eventually my inner eye became so practised that I could conjure up my visionary faculty at will, even when my external self was not at rest at all, for example when I was involved in a trivial conversation with someone or other. One of my favourite exercises was to observe, while I was reading the newspaper in the coffee house, a large tangle of rope that often appeared to me and then to untangle it in my mind, knot by knot, as clearly as if it were really there before me, until finally it was neatly coiled up, like the anchor hawser on a ship. There is one fact which I consider very important, since for me it proves that it is not my external person alone that calls up these images, but something that lies deeper: even today I cannot conjure up at will any image I happen to want. It would be of no value if I could. It would have failed in its true purpose of communication to me; then it would just be my everyday consciousness speaking to me of things which I already know of in other words.

  The faculty of inner vision which I acquired or opened up during that winter’s night was, by the way, the first turning point in my destiny that changed me, at a stroke so to speak, from a businessman to a writer: my imagination became visual. Previously I had thought in words, from then on I could also think in images; in images which I saw as if they were really there before me; no, a hundred times more real, more immediate than any physical object. ‘Vision’ has become a hackneyed word on the lips of the many; few have actually experienced one but everyone ‘knows’ exactly what a vision is supposed to look like. I myself used to prattle on like that when my eyes were still blind. A writer is praised if he has a keen talent for the observation of nature and can put it on paper by means of ink. He’s a wretched photographer, nothing more. That kind of thing has nothing to do with the art I am talking about. With the theatre, perhaps. Vision probably has the greatest influence on painting, provided that it does not take hold of the painter’s eye and innermost feeling alone, but also his hand, enabling it to reproduce the image. I know many painters and have made great efforts to explain to them that they wouldn’t need a model if they only knew how to open their inner eye. They listened, uncomprehending; none has tried to follow my advice. They prefer to make tracings of nature, bewitched by the stupid principle that nature (external nature, that is) is the teacher of all art.

  When I wrote a long letter to Mrs Besant after my experience on the stone bench, she was silent for a long time. Then I received her answer: try to rend the veil. I did not understand what she meant and kept asking again and again. From the empty platitudes she sent me — at least that was what they seemed to me — I quickly came to the conclusion that Mrs Besant had no idea what to do with me. (A strange event, connected with further visions I had, eventually cut the tie binding me to the Theosophical Society.) I continued my researches into yoga and eventually came upon the area that in India is called bhakti yoga (yoga, practised through the search for God, devotional fervour and religious ecstasy). The Masked Figure — or should I call it a kindly fate? — saved me from being afflicted with and crushed or torn apart by ecstasies, as are all those unfortunates (or fortunates, if they reach the goal) who suffer schizophrenia, show stigmata or see the ‘light’, like Ruysbroeck, and ‘unbecome’ in it, imagining they have found God as an object, forgetting that the Only God they are always talking about can never be anything but a subject. To me they are like mothers who carry a child and die when they give birth. Who knows whether in this way changelings are not sometimes born in the invisible world of causes and then — growing into Molochs — send that poison trickling into the brains of humanity which we call a spiritual epidemic, such as Bolshevism at present or the Children’s Crusade in the past?

  Before being accepted into the inner circle of the Theosophical Society, people are given (as I was) the stern warning: ‘Anyone who does not hold firm until the end, will be exposed to unheard-of danger in the spiritual realm.’ When I informed Mrs Besant that I was leaving the Society, her reply was brief: ‘I know, the snakes of Mara (an Indian expression for the Tempter) are many.’

  I shall indicate the nature of the main experience which persuaded me to leave the Theosophical Society. The real purpose of the three months probationary period before final acceptance into the ‘Inner Circle’ is for one to find one’s ‘guide’. A guide is a fundamental prerequisite and essential on the path of yoga and magic. Since I assumed the images that appeared to me would give me a hint or indication of how I might find a guide, I made constant efforts to draw out more and more new visions from inside me. (By calming my heartbeat and making the sightlines of my eyes parallel, as mentioned above.) One night, again at around two o’clock, I was sitting in my bachelor’s room in the padmasana (lotus position) practising pranayama (controlled breathing) as prescribed by the ham-ssa which consists of drawing and expelling breath through the left then the right nostril alternately. A strange numbness in the head is the usual consequence of this exercise. At the time I did not know — fortunately did not know! — that the secret purpose of hamssa-pranayama is to induce a kind of self-hynnosis. (I was told that by a young Brahmin, whom I only met in 1914.) Instinctively I fought against the numbness; if I had not, I would today probably be an unhappy medium or suffer from some other kind of schizophrenia, perhaps even religious mania. As it was, I clung to a valuable piece of advice (advice which is a jewel in Buddhist doctrine): always remain conscious. Sitting motionless, I stared fixedly at a large black circle on the wall, which I always had hanging there for the purpose of these exercises. Suddenly the paper circle became bright; it was as if a shining disc had come in front of it. I was completely awake and my mind clear. Then a figure the size of a grown man appeared, dressed in white, but with no head! I had already read a large number of occult books by then and since I have an excellent memory — and already had as a young man — a passage from one of them immediately occurred to me. It said specifically: apparitions in human form without a head signify extreme danger for those who see them. A feeling of uneasiness crept over me, but I still continued to stare at the illuminated disc. Why is this happening to me, I asked myself, despite the fact that I do not take drugs, like morphine addicts who, as their final collapse approaches, have visions of people with their heads cut off? A face below a turban — separated from the body by a gap the width of a finger — then began to form and its features gradually became clear. It looked so old it would be difficult to find a comparison. The vision remained for a while, then disappeared all at once. But the impression stayed with me for almost a whole day, as if it had etched itself on my consciousness: I could not dismiss it, as I had other visions. It gave me an extremely unpleasant feeling, which only faded the following night, when — in the deserted street as I made my way home from a meeting of the lodge of the Theosophical Society I had founded — I once more immersed myself in meditation exercises connected with finding a guru. Again my heartbeat calmed down and, despite the fact that the street was well lit and I was walking fairly quickly, a greenish beam of light the thickness of a man shot down from the sky a few yards in front of me. Where it hit the ground it split into three parts, forming a three-pointed anchor. I stopped and observed the phenomenon coolly and calmly. Not for a second did I have the feeling it was anything other then a vision. Here once again my refusal to be disconcerted by visions proved its worth. I kept a tight hold on my heart — I could almost say by force — for I sensed that the beam of light wanted to have a stronger effect on me than had ever happened with any of my previous visions. I can very well imagine that if a person with no experience in this area
had a similar experience, they would delude themselves into thinking they were having a so-called divine revelation and be swept away, with nothing to cling on to and no lifebelt, into the boundless sea of theistic delusion.

  At this point I would like to state expressly that in my personal opinion everything — everything!— to do with theism is a will-o’-the-wisp that leads us astray. I am not saying this in order to shake or shatter anyone’s pious faith. As I have said before, I do not believe those who stumble through life indifferent to everything connected with the occult and materialistic to the core are doomed to absolute perdition. Far be it from me to assume that the ‘hot ones’ — those with theistic convictions — will be spewed out from the mouth of life. If I were to declare my own belief, it would perhaps best be as follows: who is the Jacob of the old Testament, who wrestled with an angel of the Lord for a whole night until he prevailed over him? Answer: one who does not follow the thorny path of theistic faith!

  Ramakrishna, the last Indian prophet — the English scholar, Max Müller, has emphasised his great importance — Ramakrishna, a bhakta yogi par excellence, once said, ‘A person serves their God for a long time, following everything He says to them, doing everything He does, just for His sake and in His honour, being less to Him than a slave. But then one day God hands over all power to His loyal servant, whom He places on His own throne.’ This, be it noted, for those (and it will not be that many!) who follow, or long to follow the path of the bhakta.