The Vision and the Voice

THE EQUINOX called Ananda, infinitely calm and pure. Yet at the gates of mine eyes stand tears, like warriors upon the watch, that lean on their spears, listening.* The great and terrible Angel keeps on looking at me, as if to bar me from the vision. There is another blinding my mind. There is another forcing my head down in sleep. (It’s very difficult to talk at all, because an impression takes such an immense time to travel from the will to the muscles. Naturally, I’ve no idea of time.) I have gone up again to the child, led by two Angels, abasing my head. This child seems to be the child that one attempted to describe in ‘The Garden of Janus.” Every volition is inhibited. I have tried to say a lot, and it has always got lost on the way. Holy art thou, O more beautiful than all the stars of the Night! There has never been such peace, such silence. But these are positive things. Singing praises of things eternal amid the flames of first glory, and every note of every song is a fresh flower in the garland of peace. This child danceth not, but it is because he is the soul of the two dances,—the right hand and the left hand, and in him they are one dance, the dance without motion. There is dew on all the fire. Every drop is the quintes- sence of the ecstasy of stars. * There are long intervals between many of these paragraphs, the Seer having been lost to Being. The reader will note that “The Great and Terrible Angel” has not been mentioned, but comes in suddenly. This was because the Seer’s speech was inaudible, or never occurred. This angel was the “Higher Genius” of the Seer. 168