Daily Theosophy

There would be 49 pitches within in a whole-tone scale, or 114 in a regular scale before reaching the next octave. Perhaps even a next subdivision. It was just fantasy. He had no means to try. But his depression had gone.

(111)

(journey continued)

Behind the highest mountains were forested mountains, and behind the forests were deserts where it could be flaming hot. Hotter than he ever imagined would exist on earth, though he had read about it in books – but one can not feel heat from a book, of course. He also crossed main roads full with almost soundless cars, trucks and buses and trains in the middle of the deserts. Then there were mountain peaks that were always scorching hot during the day and ice cold during the night, and on which grew no trees and where there were hardly any places to hide. Then again weeks further he traveled through lush landscapes of sharp snow-less mountain peaks and broad rivers, silently following their course of immense and awful beauty. He felt very small and humble in such landscapes. He took boats, and at one time entered a side river between awe-inspiring mountains, and met, on a very desolate place, gigantic statues in the rocks, twenty five times the size of himself of ‘people’ who looked somewhat like the Buddha he new from his home country, but much bigger, and much less friendly in facial expression. They expressed intelligent brute power rather than kindness and wisdom. How small was he himself between all this! He traveled and traveled, and came in caves full of colorful paintings and sculptures of godlike people, but also saw paintings of beings flying through the sky, mostly painted above these godlike man and women, with the same beautiful mindless eyes as had seen himself so many times in the faces of his nature spirits. So these painters in the caves of who knows how many hundreds or thousands of years ago, knew about these ‘unseen beings.’ As much as he himself did! But then they must also have known about the real gods!! But now, there was only silence, apart from sometimes a few, mostly big white or pink skinned visitors with a camera. They never staid long after taking their picture. They had no time. Time and silence enough to think and meditate for Shano. So he met people and peoples and cultures, rivers and mountains, small and big animals, heat and snow, hardship and comfort. There were times when he could find nothing to eat, but it happened never longer than a few days in a row, so he would survive. His mind became clearer and clearer. He understood much more of his philosophy books, and even things not discussed in these books. He wondered if he would ever die, or life forever – like they say about the gods. He still wanted to learn more, understand more, experience more, travel more – but also he felt that some day life would change for him again.

He went to many other cities, sometimes stayed a few days or a week. Most of them were much cleaner than the city in which he had lived a few years, and people seemed better in some places. He saw strange people going into and coming out of strange temples with lions on the roofs and dragons painted everywhere. Everyone was looking for God or many gods or symbols or idols of gods, and was worshiping them with incense and lights, but nobody seemed to know the real gods. It gave the people both consolation and despair to visit these temples. At some places people were singing together in large houses with large heave-pointing towers built for god or the gods or a great teacher from the remote past. All these places, sacred texts, images, shrines and gigantic and impressive prayer halls were called holy, and had survived despite all modern science and technology. Each of these things were built according to phantasies of people who had never met a real God, but still yearned for Him or It or Them, and had used their best powers of imagination. Sometimes they had felt that the gods or their messengers themselves had helped them to form their phantasies. All these things had some strange beauty in its own way, however primitive many idols and rituals were. There was a hope and at the same time almost desperate doubt in the people’s minds about the real meaning of life, and sometimes many people felt that the gods or God or the Master had left them alone because of their own sins, and thus felt guilty. But Shano noticed that all of these things had reality and truth at their core – even though nor he nor anyone else could describe it. He also felt clearly that one day he would know, but how to reach that knowledge was escaping him – he had but a faint intuition. He also knew, or at least hoped, that the spiritual poverty in the human hearts would be replaced, first by dawning mental understanding, then by real inner wealth, so great that money and selfishness would become but trifles or memories from an idiot past.

After a long trek he came to a city with most beautiful ancient blue and green tiled buildings, where people looked again different, spoke again very different languages (though many spoke English also) and had a very different religions from what he had met so far. Above the city were flyovers on which were speeding slender trains, sometimes these ran more than three hundred fifty miles per hour on the longer stretches, but almost noiseless. There were hardly any cars, and it was very clean. Individuals were moving on the smooth streets either on splendid bicycles or on and in vehicles as noiseless and clean as the trains. They had all possible technical things, like in every city, but at the same time many artisans lived in that city, making fine pottery, colorful geometric tiles, carpets of amazing design of the warmest natural colors, mostly deep red, but also royal blue and natural green and black; their architecture was amazingly beautiful – almost heavenly, I would say. In general, there were many kinds of fine handicrafts. It also had a huge tower, at least a thousand feet high, may be more, and in front of it was a big square. You could enter it through a door below on the square, and behind the door was another door, belonging to an elevator bringing you to the very top of the building within seconds. From the top of the building you had a marvelous view over the city and the surrounding landscape and you could see its gigantic domes down below in their bright glassy blue and blue-green colors. Between the domes you saw the transport system running through the city, and out of and into the city, as far as the horizon, lingering out to the rest of the world. It was like a network of glistering silk threads spun together into a loose carpet. They were all connected, so the travelers along these lines could go from anywhere to anywhere. Extensions of this network he had seen everywhere since he had left the highest mountains, but Shano had always chosen to walk. Despite all modernity, people had kept their own heart, and had never been so blinded as to forget beauty. Even their modern buildings and transport system reflected a beauty that seemed almost heavenly – as far as Shano could imagine heaven. The religion of these people was that they prayed to only one God, who could not be seen, of which no image could be made, who had no form because His body alone was all form, whose name could not really be known, but was all and contained all and by whom everything was created from himself by means of the infallible intelligent energy from himself; and all beings were there to pray to him and to learn and to experience while being invisibly guided according to their true devotion, until they would forever go to heaven. But, apart from some scholars and mystics, the people didn’t understand very much of it mentally. These people had some calmness, some wisdom, they understood that being with God means walking in the ways of God as best as you can – and that included beauty and contentment; but they knew nothing about Shano’s invisible world. However he could clearly see that it was there – and most of that wasn’t of the worst kind at all. It seemed as if everything was praying, directing his better self to something higher, from which it came. He felt that some of the people in these cities really possessed great wisdom, but hid it for everyone but their intimate friends. Such people would keep themselves far from technical gadgets and TV’s and world news, but they seemed to understand the world better and deeper than those who did have TV’s and a hundred different communication gadgets. Even today, they were widely respected, even by those who did have all such things. Not everything was light though. The city had millions of inhabitants, and some parts were less prosperous, though never really poor, because there was a well-developed social system, in which the wealthier people donated a part of their income for the good of the less fortunate. At a few places he saw a faint darkness as a fog hanging around houses and some streets. That is were some very fanatic people lived, little educated, but cherished the added believe that theirs was the only good religion and theirs was the only God, and that all people who didn’t believe in their God (the Only True One, as they had misconstrued from the teachings of the educated), and some of them thought of violence and waging war about far away nations. But they were only a rather powerless remainder of former generations where such people had really been aggressive. Now they were mostly peaceful outside, but not really in their minds. They belonged to the past, but could potentially rise again in the future.

Shano liked the city and stayed the whole (very) cold winter, in a rented room looking out to one of the blue green domes. Sometimes it was freezing dozens of degrees below zero, but on the whole the climate was sunny and comfortable. He met many wise people who gave him much to think as well as artists and artisans. Of course his favorites were players and builders of musical instruments. He still cherished his wish to become a musician and instrument builder himself. They played the ancient instruments, but played modern music based on old traditions, mixed with the subtleties they had learned from other cultures, especially from the far east and south, but also from the far west; and the greatest of them added new subtleties to the music that were nor ancient nor modern – perhaps they were of all times for those who can hear them. Thus something new had been born in art, a remarkable start for musical development in the future. Shano learned to play some of these instruments – amazingly quick and sensitive, and his teachers really regretted when he decided to continue his journey. He himself regretted it also, but there was some urge, some undefined expectation that drove him on. Every good and evil that always dwells in every city was there also, but this city was definitely much more beautiful, more widely build, more cultured and well-organized than the city he has lived from his 14^th to 16^th year.

Then he proceeded to other places and moved into the mountains again, away from the buzz of civilization. He thought about what the philosophers of his books called ‘deliverance’, ‘nirvana,’ …