THE EQUINOX
“Ha,” he replied, “he no good, he my disciple, I am the
master!”
“And Swami Dayanand Sarasvati?” I continued. The
same answer was vouched to me, although this latter teacher
had died at the age of seventy, forty years ago. Thinking it
about time to change the conversation, I said:
“O Thou Shower from the Highest! Tell thy grovelling
disciple what then zs a ‘lie’?”
“Ha!” he replied, “it is illusion, this truth that has been
diverged from its real point . . . an illusive spring in the
primo-genial fermentation of ‘fee-no-me-non,’ in this typo-
cosmy apparent to the senses which you call ‘de Vurld’!!!”
With this, and promises of oceans of blissful reality from
the highest eternality of ultimate ecstasy, he bade me sit in a
chair and blow alternately through my nostrils; and, if I had
faith, so he assured me, I should in six months’ time arrive
at the supreme stage of the Highest
in the infinite Ultimatum,
and should burst as a chance illusively fermented bubble in the
purest atmosphere of the highest reality.
The next occasion on which I saw the Mahatma was at
a business meeting of his disciples held at 60, South Audley
Street. His Holiness called them tiger-cubs, nevertheless
seldom have I seen sucha pen full of sheep. A man from
Ilfracombe proposed this, and a man from Liverpool seconded
that; at last a London plumber arose, and with great solemnity
declared: ‘‘Gintlemen, hi taik hit ’is ’oliness his really ’oly,
hin fact gintlemen hi taik hit ’e his Gawd; . . . hand so hi
proposes the very least we can do for ’im his to subscribe
yearly towards ’im foive shillins!” (ear, ear” from a comrade
in the corner). However, the sheep wouldn’t have it, and the
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