No one can say whether, after such a long spiritual journey, you will be granted miraculous powers, such as the prophets of antiquity possessed, or whether you will be allowed to enter into eternal peace.
Such powers are the free gift of those who guard the keys to these mysteries. If they become yours to use, then it is only for the sake of humanity, which stands in need of such signs.
Our path leads finally to the journey; if you reach that stage, then you are worthy to receive that gift. Will it be granted you? I do not know.
But however that might be, you will have become a phoenix; it is in your power to enforce that.
Before I take my leave of you, there is one more thing you should learn: the signs by which you shall know, when the time of the ‘great equinox’ is come, whether you have been called to receive the gift of miraculous powers, or not.
One ofthose who guard the keys to the mysteries of magic has remained on earth, to seek and gather together the elect. He cannot die, just as the legend surrounding him cannot die.
Some say he is the ‘Wandering Jew’; others call him Elijah; the gnostics maintain he is John the Evangelist; but each one who claims to have seen him, gives a different description of his appearance. Do not let yourself be disconcerted if, in the burgeoning days of the future, you should meet some who talk of him in this manner. It is only natural that each person should see him differently. A being such as he, who has transformed his body into spirit, cannot be bound to a single fixed form.
One example will suffice to show you that his form and his face can only be images, ghostly reflections of his true essence, so to speak.
Let us assume he appears to you as being of a green colour. Although you can see it, green is not a real colour, it arises from a mixture of blue and yellow; if you thoroughly combine blue and yellow, you will get green.
Every painter knows that; but few people realise that the world we live in stands likewise under the sign of green and thus does not reveal its true nature, namely blue and yellow.
From this example you can see that if he should appear to you as aman with a green face, his true countenance has stillnotbeen made manifest.
But if you should see him in his true form, as a geometrical sign, as a seal in the sky which only you and no other can see, then know: you have been called to work miracles.
I met him in physical form, as a man, and it was allowed me to thrust my hand into his side.
His name was…”
Hauberrisser guessed the name. It was on the slip ofpaperhe always carried with him. It was the name that constantly leapt out at him:
Chidher Green.
A breath of decay in the air, the stifling heat of dying days, the chill of misty nights; spider webs like patches of mould on the rotting grass in the early morning light; the purplish-brown clods of earth around dull, cold puddles that keep out of the way of the sun; straw-coloured flowers that lack the strength to raise their faces towards the glassy sky; tumbling butterflies with ragged wings that have lost their bloom; the harsh rustle of brittle-stemmed leaves in the avenues of the city …
Like a fading beauty trying to hide her age beneath a welter of bright cosmetics, nature was flaunting her autumn colours.
Amsterdam had long forgotten the name Eva van Druysen. Baron Pfeill assumed she was dead; Sephardi mourned for her. Hauberrisser alone kept her image alive; but he did not talk of her when his friends or Swammerdam occasionally came to visit him. He did not breathe a word of the cocoon of hope he was wrapping himself up in; he still believed he would find her, and the belief grew stronger with every day, but he felt that to mention it might tear a delicate web. To Swammerdam alone he hinted at this feeling, though not with words.
Since he had finished reading the roll of papers a transformation had taken place within him which he hardly comprehended himself. First of all he had practised sitting still, whenever it had occurred to him, for an hour, sometimes more, sometimes less; he had approached this exercise partly out of curiosity, and partly with the scepticism of one whose heart bore the legend, `Nothing will come of it’, a motto which almost guarantees failure.
After a week the exercise had been reduced to fifteen minutes each morning; but now he was putting all his effort into it, performing it for its own sake and not with the exhausting and ever-disappointed feeling that a miracle might after all happen.
Soon it had become indispensable to him, like a refreshing bath that he looked forward to every evening when he went to bed. By day he was for a long time often driven to deepest despair by the sudden thought that he had lost Eva, at the same time recoiling inhorrorfrom the idea that he should combat such painful reflections by means of magic, that he should run away, as it were, from the anguish of the memory of Eva; such an escape from the pain seemed selfish, a denial of love, a lie, but one day, when his sorrow became too much for him and he thought he was about to commit suicide, he did try it.
Following the instructions, he had sat upright, trying to force himself into a state of higher wakefulness, in order to escape from his bitter thoughts at least for a few moments; strangely enough, and quite contrary to his expectations, he succeeded at the very first try. Before the attempt, he had assumed that if he did manage to reach the state of higher wakefulness he would leave it with regret, and return to life with his pain redoubled. Nothing of the kind happened. On the contrary, he was filled with an incomprehensible feeling ofcertainty that Eva was alive and threatened by no danger whatsoever, however much he deliberately encouraged his doubts, they could not penetrate his new-found confidence.
Before, the thought of Eva had come to him a hundred times a day, and each time it had been like the lash of a red-hot whip; now it seemed like a joyful message that, far away, Eva was thinking of him and sending a greeting. What had previously been a cause of anguish had been suddenly transformed into a source of joy.
Thus the exercise had created a refuge within him, to which he could withdraw at any time, to find new assurance and that mysterious growth, which will ever be an empty word to those who do notknow it from experience, however often they are told about it.
Before he had experienced this new state, he had imagined that if he could ever leave his sorrow for Eva behind, it would mean his wounded soul would heal over all the more quickly, in an accelerated demonstration of the saying that time is a great healer. He had resisted this with every fibre in his body, as do all those who clearly recognise that the passing of sorrow at the death of the beloved means that the image, which they do not want to lose, will also fade.
But there was a small, flower-strewn path between these two precipices, whose existence he had not suspected, but which now opened up before him. Eva’s image had not, as he had feared it might, sunk without trace in the mists of time; no, only the pain had disappeared, and her tear-stained image had been replaced by the risen Eva herself, and at moments of inner repose he could feel her presence as clearly as if she were standing in front of him.
As he withdrew more and more from the outside world, there were times when he was overcome with such a deep happiness as he would never have thought possible. Insight followed insight as he came to see more and more clearly that there were true miracles of inner experience compared with which the events of physical existence not only appeared to be, as he had always thought, but actually were as light to shade.
The image of the phoenix as the eagle of eternal renewal impressed itself on him more and more, revealed daily ever new significance and taught him to appreciate the unsuspected wealth of difference between living and dead symbols. Everything that he sought seemed to be contained within this inexhaustible symbol. It explained things that puzzled him, like an omniscient being whom he only had to ask to learn the truth.
In all his efforts to control the comings and goings of his thoughts he had noticed that, although he sometimes had great success, when he assumed he knew precisely how it had been done, he always found the next day he had no memory of it l
eft whatsoever. It was as if it had been erased from his mind, and he appeared to have to start from the very beginning again and think up a new method.
‘The sleep of the body has robbed me of the fruit of my efforts’, he told himself and decided to counter it by not going to sleep for as long as possible, until one morning he was granted the insight that this strange disappearance from his memory was nothing other than the ‘burning to ashes’ from which, again and again, the phoenix arose rejuvenated; he realised that it was a habit from his transient, earthly existence to create methods and try to remember them, that, as Pfeill had said in Hilversum, the valuable thing was not the completed painting, but the ability to paint.
Since he had achieved this insight, mastering his thoughts became a source of constant delight to him, instead of an exhausting struggle, and, without noticing, he climbed from step to step until suddenly he realised to his astonishment that he already possessed the key to a mastery of which he had never even dreamed. “It is as if until now thoughts had buzzed around me like a swarm of bees, which took their nourishment from me”, was how he had explained it to Swammerdam, with whom he still used to discuss his inner experiences. “Now I can send them out by my will and they return to me laden with honey - with insights. They used to plunder me, now they enrich me.”
By chance, a week later he came across a similar spiritual process described in the roll of papers in almost the same words, and realised, to his joy, that he had taken the right path of development without having to be instructed.
The pages on which it was written had previously been stuck together by damp and mould; they had separated due to the heat from the sun at the window by which they were kept.
He felt that something similar had happened to his thoughts.
In the years just before and during the war he had read much about so-called mysticism and, instinctively, everything connected with it had evoked the word `confused’, for everything he read about it was characterised by vagueness and sounded like the delirium of an opium-eater. His judgment had not been wrong, because what commonly went under the name of mysticism was really nothing but groping around in the fog; but now he realised that there was a true mystical state - difficult to discover and even more difficult to attain - which was not only the equal of everyday experience, but in fact far exceeded it in vividness.
There was nothing here that reminded him of the suspicious raptures of the ecstatic `mystics’; there was no humble whining for a selfish `salvation’ which, to appear all the more glorious, needed to be seen against the bloody background of all the sinners condemned to the eternal torments of hell; and the glutted complacency of the bestial masses, who equated a ripe belch with a firm grip on reality, had also vanished like an unpleasant dream.
Hauberrisser had switched off the light and was sitting at his desk waiting, waiting through the darkness.
Night covered the window like a dark, heavy cloth.
He felt that Eva was by him, but he could not see her.
When he closed his eyes, colours billowed like clouds behind his lids, dissolved and then formed again. He had learnt from his experiences that they were the material from which he could form pictures, if he wanted, pictures which at first seemed stiff and lifeless but then, as if some mysterious force had breathed life into them, took on an independent existence, as if they were beings like himself.
A few days ago he had managed by this method to bring Eva’s face to life, and he had thought he must be on the right path to establishing a new kind of spiritual communication with her, but then he recalled the passage in the roll of papers about the hallucinations of the witches and realised that here began the boundless realm of ghosts and that once he had entered it he would never find his way back again.
The more this power of giving shape to his innermost, unconscious wishes grew, the greater, he felt, must be the danger of losing himself on a path from which there was no return.
It was with a feeling of both horror and ardent longing that he thought back to those minutes when he had succeeded in calling up the spectre of Eva. At first it had been grey and shadowy, then it had slowly taken on colour and life, until it stood before him, as clear as if it were made of flesh and blood. Even now he could still feel the icy shudder that had run through his body as, driven on by some magic instinct, he risked trying to make the vision respond to hearing and touch as well.
The desire to call up her image kept on rising unbidden from his subconscious, and each time he had to call on all his strength of will to resist the temptation.
The night was well advanced, but he could still not make up his mind to go to bed; he could not get rid of the feeling thatthere must be some magic means of calling up Eva so that she would come to him not as a ghostly vampire, brought to life by the breath of his own soul, but in her own true form.
He sent out his thoughts, so that they would return to him laden with new intuition as to how to set about it. He knew from the progress he had made during the last few weeks that this method of sending out questions and patiently awaiting the answer, this conscious change from an active to a passive state, could even be successful when it concerned matters which could not be determined by logical thought.
Insight upon insight buzzed through his mind, the one more grotesque and fantastic than the last; he weighed them in the balance of his feeling: each one was found wanting
Again `wakefulness’ was the key that helped him to open the hidden lock. This time, however - it came to him instinctively - it was his body, and not just his mind alone, that had to be aroused to higher activity; the magic powers were asleep within his body, and it was they he had to waken if he wanted to affect the material world.
He found an instructive example in the whirling of the Arabian dervishes, the purpose of which, he assumed, was nothing other than to whip the body up into a state of higher ‘wakefulness’.
Following an intuition, he laid his hands on his knees and sat upright in the position of Egyptian idols - with their impassive expressions they suddenly seemed to him like symbols of magic power - forcing his body to maintain a corpse-like stillness, whilst at the same time sending a fiery current of will power blazing through every fibre of his body.
After only a few minutes a storm of unprecedented fury was raging inside him. A demented cacophony of voices-were they animals or humans? - the angry barking of dogs and the shrill crowing of numerous cocks all echoed in his mind; in the room an uproar broke out as if the house was about to burst; the metallic thunder of a gong reverberated through his bones, as if hell were ringing in the Day of Judgment; he felt he was about to disintegrate and his skin burnt as if he were wearing the shirt of Nessus, but he gritted his teeth and did not allow his body the slightest movement.
Unceasingly, with every heartbeat, he called for Eva.
A voice, the softest of whispers that yet pierced the racket like a sharp needle, warned him not to play with forces whose strength he did not know, that he was not yet ready to master them, that at any moment he might be plunged into incurable madness - he ignored it.
The voice grew louder and louder, so loud that the hubbub around seemed to fade into the distance; it screamed at him to turn back: Eva would indeed come if he did not stop unleashing the dark forces of the underworld in his effort to call her, but if she should come before her time of spiritual development was finished, her life would be snuffed out like a candle flame the very moment she appeared, and that would burden him with a greater sorrow than he could bear. He gritted his teeth and ignored it. The voice then tried to reason with him: Eva would have long since come to him or sent news of where she was, if it had been allowed; and did he not have proof that she was alive and hourly sent her passionate thoughts out to him, in the certainty of her presence which he felt every day? He ignored it and called and called.
He was so consumed with longing to clasp Eva in his arms, even if it were only for a brief moment, that all other considerations had vanished.
Suddenly the pandaemonium died down and he saw that the room was as bright as day. In the middle there rose, as if it had sprouted from the floorboards, a post of rotten wood with a cross-beam at the top, like a truncated cross.
A bright-green, shimmering snake as thick as a man’s arm was wrapped round the cross-beam; its head hung down and its lidless stare was fixed on him. Its face-there was a strip ofblack material wrapped round its forehead - resembled that of a mummified human being; the skin of its lips, dry and thin as parchment, was stretched over the decayed, yellowish teeth.
In spite of the corpse-like distortion of the features, Hauberrisser could see a distant resemblance to the face of Chidher Green, as he had stood before him in the shop in the Jodenbreetstraat.
His hair stood on end and the blood froze in his veins as he listened to the words that slowly, syllable by syllable and in a soft, whistling voice that seemed to break at each vowel, dribb led from the decomposing lips, “Wh-aat do-o you wa-ant froom meee?”
For a moment terror paralysed him; he could feel Death lurking behind him and thought he saw an obscene black spider scuttle across the gleaming table-top; then his heart screamed the name: Eva.
Immediately the room went dark again and when, dripping with sweat, he groped his way to the door and switched on the electric light, the wooden cross with the snake had disappeared.
He felt as if the air were poisoned, he could hardly breathe and the room was spinning.
He tried to persuade himself that the vision must have been the result of a feverish delirium, but in vain; he could not rid himself of the terror that was clutching at his throat and that was telling him that everything he had just seen had been an actual, physical presence here in the room.
Icy shivers ran down his spine when he remembered the warning voice; the mere thought that it might reawaken, to scream at him that his crazy magical experiments had really called Eva and had plunged her into mortal danger, was enough to scorch his brain.
The Green Face Page 19