Daily Theosophy

(99)

(The child shano)

Shano, living in his happy innocence like all boys and girls of his age, was special compared to the other children in that he could spend very long hours entirely on his own. He would just sit and look and think. He liked to sit near little babbling brooks with their crystal clear cold water, and watch the movements of the water over the stones in the brook. Sometimes he would remove all his cloths and sit naked on a stone with his little feet in the cold water – at least for a short time and then drew them up because the water was very cold, and he felt the warm sun shine on his skin, making him warm of one side and cold on the other – he loved it all: the little winds playing over his back and his front, his arms and his feet, and even the small insects landing on his body which he liked to feel them walking and itching. He could feel the coldness of the stone inside, and even the nature of the character of the stone – the mineral kingdom being as rich in feelings – though very stable – as all other life. He would look and feel and listen, and sometimes lay on his back on a flat stone to feel the stone better and to look at the Azure blue sky. There seemed no limit to his feeling of joy and happiness. Even though everything was the same – nothing was ever entirely the same. Every gush of water over any stone was a little bit different from the former, and every little bit of splashing water had its own sound. He could become completely absorbed in that sound and the movements and the colors of the water. And then there were these insects in all colors, flying to flowers or just sitting on stones: beetles, dragonflies, butterflies, bees, and flies with shiny green-golden backs. They made different sounds when flying due to the fast beating of their wings, constantly changing in pitch, and changing direction, approaching, circling around his head (and sometimes sitting on it with their tiny itchy feet – a feeling he liked – to a limit at least) and approaching and moving away, and he soon learned to recognize the one from the other by the sound only. One thing was sure: they were all very busy with something, with some duty and enjoyment. Some would land near a tiny hole in the clay, and then look happy like a mother returning home to greet her children, going in and then after some time coming out of the hole again for another flight. When so absorbed he would sometimes see small, somewhat human-like beings, which had all kinds of forms and colors and were transparent and all the time changing. Some would sit on leaves, some could fly, or just rise up and down in the air. Some could go under water also. They ware actually the little spirits or sprites of nature, who helped everything to get its form and its beauty. He noticed that they were reacting to his own moods and thoughts. When he felt completely happy they were most beautiful, and the mood of nature was beautiful. They reacted to him, because, when sometimes – which happened very seldom – he felt less happy because of some thought coming to his mind, they would immediately change, and the mood of nature would also change. In this way his own mood influenced the beauty of nature. Even the seemingly haphazard flights of the butterflies and other insects were influenced by it. The circles they were flying would be most harmonious in such places. There were places in the valley, where, without knowing why, these creatures were less beautiful, and nature was also less beautiful and happy, and there was some feeling of disharmony. There would be other insects too, and even the people who came to such places where different. But there was nowhere real ugliness. Everything influenced everything. But the places where Shano usually went, where exceedingly beautiful. And if by any change another lonely person was wandering to these spots, even though they did not see anything, they sometimes stopped, and thought: ‘How beautiful is nature. God must have given special attention to this spot.’ The function of the invisible creatures was to help every plant in its growth and helped to become perfect in beauty. Some sprites seemed to have the same feelings as Shano had when he was listening to the water sounds. Maybe they actually were the feelings someone has when paying close attention to nature. He wondered who had made that music, and these creatures. Or whether it was not made, but just there. On his age that question was difficult to answer. Around the small brook, in and on top of shrubs and some trees, birds were often making sounds of a magic nature, and move from one place to another, and some had beautiful colors also. Shano thought that this was the most beautiful thing in the world – though perhaps, behind the mountains, were even more beautiful and magic worlds. Sometimes he told his friends about what he saw, but they only looked like he was talking nonsense – Shano did not realize at that time that nobody around him could see what he saw. Later he learned that there was an old witch in another village who told stories about these things, and when he finally met her, he felt that she was the only person who could understand him. But she lived quite far away, and Shano could not see her often.

However happy his life was, and however good and cheerful his parents and his sisters (at least most of the time), some feeling was arising in Shano’s soul. He looked up at the mountains surrounding the valley, where he had never been. He wished to go up to these mountains, and he wanted to know what was behind. Of this he knew nothing. He had never been anywhere further than a few miles, and with his friends he had gone up to the meadows higher up the hills, where sheep were grazing, and shepherds taking care of them. Once or twice he had seen someone from still higher, where people had black hairy cow-like creatures, which he had heard, people could milk and of the milk they could make cheese. The cheese was sometimes available where he lived. For the rest he had only heard some stories of the ‘other world’, told by the carriers, most of whom had never been to the great city, but who themselves had the stories second hand. Nevertheless the stories were intriguing to the boys.

It was told that at places in the lower valleys, far away, at least ten day’s walk from here, millions of people were living together, and that they had built their houses so close to each other that there was no more land left to grow crops, no space for meadows with sheep, and that on a whole it was much warmer most of the year and that it was stinking terribly. But other stories painted another picture. People were always having fun, and visiting places together to get drunk (whatever that might be) and they would fight and quarrel, but also they would do a lot of things together. In this way they could make things that one could not even imagine in Shano’s environment. And what is better to stir an adventurous boy’s mind than telling stories that are true, but which you are not supposed to check for yourself?! It really became Shano’s desire to see these places with his own eyes. But how could he? His parents would never allow him to walk more than three miles on his own and if he stayed out longer than two hours they would be very upset. Moreover he had been warned that some places, a few days walk away, were very dangerous human like monsters – or perhaps they were actually humans who could kill you with a big bang just by looking at you – even though most of them were otherwise very kind, and were called maoiss or something like that. But in the city with the hundreds of thousand of houses, some people were sitting on fancy chairs inside the houses, every day, looking to some kind of shining screen and moving there fingers fanatically all the time, it was told. It wasn’t clear to Shano whether these screens or these people themselves were called con-puters, but they could work miracles that even the gods of the old stories couldn’t match. They must be great yogi’s or magicians, Shano thought. ‘I want to go there, later, when I am big, and I want to become a con-puter also,’ thought Shano, but he kept his wish secret. Reddish-pink-skinned people, usually very big – one looked even eight foot high, at least four times as big as he himself and twice as big as his father, he thought – with strange cloths made of strange materials and large packs on their backs, who never answered when he said something to them, but mostly smiled, and then pressed on a button on what he thought might be a phone with one eye (he had heard stories about phones) which they held before him at some two meters distance, sometimes moving their fingers over it or talking to it – and it would even answer in some strange language; and them went on waving their hands. Some had very long hairs, and he was never sure whether they were boys or girls. But all this that was a pretty rare event in that remote area.

His own environment was beautiful and happy and full of fun also, but not very exciting. Compared to the stories, he found his place even quite boring.