The Green Face (31 page)

At first he had occasionally visited Eva’s grave in the nearby
cemetery, but it was always just a mechanical, mindless walk.
Whenever he tried to tell himself that she was there, under the
earth, and that he ought to feel sorrow, the thought seemed so
absurd that he often forgot to place the flowers he had brought
on the mound, and took them back home with him.

The whole idea of sorrow had become an empty word forhim
and had lost all power over his emotions. Sometimes, when he
pondered on this strange transformation within him, he felt
almost a horror of himself.

In such a mood he was sitting one evening at the window, his
eyes fixed on the setting sun. In front of the house a tall poplar
towered up from a desert of dry, brown grass. The only sign of
life far and wide was a tiny patch of green, like an oasis, where
there grew an apple-tree covered in blossom; sometimes the
farmers came to see it, as if they were on a pilgrimage to the site
of a miracle.

As he gazed out over the desolate landscape, a thought came
to him, “Mankind, that eternal phoenix, has burnt itself to ashes
in the course of the centuries; but will it rise again?”

He remembered the apparition of Chidher Green, and his
words came back to him that he had stayed on earth in order to
`give’.

“And what am I doing?” he asked himself. “I have become
a walking corpse, a withered tree like that poplar over there.
Who, apart from myself, knows there is a second, secret life?
Swammerdam set me on the path, and the unknown writer
showed me the way, but I keep all these fruits that destiny has
dropped in my lap for myself. Not even my best friends, Pfeill
and Sephardi, suspect what is going on inside me; they imagine
I have withdrawn to solitude to grieve for Eva. People seem to me like ghosts making their way blindly through life, or like
caterpillars, crawling along the ground, unaware that they have
the seeds of a butterfly inside them; but does that give me the
right to avoid them?”

He leapt up as he felt a sudden violent urge to set off for the
city that very moment, to stand at some street comer, like one
of the many itinerant prophets who were announcing the Day
of Judgment, and scream to the multitude that there was a bridge
linking life on earth with the world beyond. The next moment
he sat down again. “I would only be casting pearls before
swine”, he reflected. “Me masses would not understand me;
they snivel and whine for a god to come down from heaven to
them, only to betray him and crucify him. And the few people
of true worth, the few who are seeking a way of redemption for
themselves, would they listen to me? No. Those who have truth
to give away have fallen into disrepute.” Pfeill came to mind,
who in Hilversum had said he would have to be asked first
whether he was prepared to accept a gift.

“No, no, that wouldn’t work”, he told himself, and thought
hard. “Strange; the richer you become in inner wealth, the less
you can give to others. My path is taking me farther and farther
away from mankind, soon the time will come when they cannot
hear my voice at all.”

He realised he had almost reached that point.

He thought of the roll of papers, and the strange manner in
which it had come into his possession. “I will continue it with
a description of my own life”, he decided, “and leave it to fate
to decide what will happen to it. It shall be my testament, and
I shall leave it in the care of him who said, ‘I have remained to
give, to each what he desires’; he shall see that it comes into the
hands of people who can make use of it, of people who thirst for
an inner awakening. If it leads to only one person awakening to
immortality, it will give meaning to my life.”

He went to his desk and sat down, to illustrate the teachings
of the roll of papers with his own experiences. His intention was
to take them back to his former apartment and place them in the
hole in the panelling, from which they had fallen on his face that
fateful night. He started:

“TO THE UNKNOWN PERSON WHO SHALL
INHERIT THESE PAPERS

The hand that wrote these papers you are holding may well
have long ago decayed.

Something tells me that they will come to you at a time when
you need them, as a ship with torn sails that is being driven onto
the rocks needs its anchor.

In the writings that accompany mine, you will find set down
a teaching, which contains all we need to know to cross over, as
by a bridge, to a new world full of marvels.

I have nothing to add, apart from a description of my life and
the spiritual states I achieved with the help of the teaching. If all
these lines do is to strengthen you in your belief that there truly
is a secret path leading beyond mortal humanity, then they will
have achieved their purpose.

The night, in which I am writing these lines for you, is filled
with the stench of horrors to come, horrors not for me, but for
the multitude of those who have not ripened on the tree of life.
I do not know whether I shall see the `first hour’ of the new age,
that you will find mentioned by my predecessor, perhaps this
night will be my last, but: whether I part from this earth tomorrow or in a few years’ time, I am stretching out my hand into the
future to touch yours. Grasp it, just as I grasped the hand of my
predecessor, so that the chain of the `doctrine of wakefulness’
shall not be broken, and pass on your legacy, when your time
comes.”

It was long past midnight when his narrative had reached the
point in his life when Chidher Green had saved him from committing suicide. He paced up and down, deep in thought. He felt
that here began the great gulf separating the comprehension of
a normal person, however imaginative, however ready to believe, from that of one who had been spiritually wakened. Were
there words at all to give even an approximate impression of
what he had experienced continually from that point onward?

For a long time he was uncertain whether or not to finish his
description with Eva’s funeral. He went into the next room to
take the silver holder he had had made for the roll of papers out of his suitcase. While he was looking for it, he happened upon
the papier-mache skull he had bought a year ago in the Hall of
Riddles. Deep in thought, he examined it by the light of the
lamp, and the same thoughts that he had had a year ago came into
his head.

`It is more difficult to master the eternal smile than to find the
skull one bore on one’s neck in a previous existence.’ It sounded
like the promise of a joyful future, in which the serene smile
would be mastered.

His past life, with all the pain of his designs and desires, now
seemed unbelievably distant, alien, as if it really had all taken
place in this ridiculous and yet so prophetic object made of
papier-mache, and not in his own head. An involuntary smile
greeted the thought that here he was holding his own skull in his
hand. The world he had left behind seemed like a magicians’
shop, full of worthless junk.

He picked up his pen and wrote,

“When Chidher Green left me, and, in some way I could not
understand, seemed to take all my grief for Eva with him, I
turned back to the bed to kiss her hand; but I saw a man kneeling
there with his head on her arm, and in astonishment I recognised
my own body. Myself I could not see any more; when I looked
down at myself there was nothing but empty air. But the man by
the bed had stood up and was looking down at his feet, just as
I believed I was doing. It was as if he were my shadow, and had
to carry out every movement I ordered him to.

I bent over the dead body - he did so as well. I presume that
as he looked at her he suffered and felt pain; I presume so, but
I do not know. For me the woman who was lying there, motionless, with a smile frozen on her face, was the corpse of a divinely
beautiful, unknown girl, like a wax model that left my heart
cold, a statue that was a perfect likeness of Eva, but only a
likeness.

I felt so incredibly happy that it was an unknown woman, and
not Eva, who had died, that I could not speak for joy.

Then three figures entered the room. In them I recognised my
friends and saw them go over to my body to comfort it, but it was
only my `shadow’; it smiled and answered not a word. How could it have? It could not open its mouth itself, it was incapable
of doing anything other than what I ordered it to do. To me, my
friends and all the other people I saw later in the church and at
the funeral had become phantoms, just like my own body: the
hearse, the horses, the torchbearers, the wreaths, the houses we
passed, the graveyard, the sky, the soil and the sun, they were
all images without an inner life of their own, like a colourful
dreamworld I was observing, glad that it did not concern me any
more.

Since then my freedom has expanded more and more, and I
know that I have grown beyond the threshold of death. Occasionally at night I see my body lying there asleep, I hear its
regular breathing, and yet all the time I am awake. Its eyes are
closed, and yet I can look around and be anywhere I want to.
When it is roaming around, I can rest, and when it is resting, I
can roam around. But I can also see with its eyes and hear with
its ears whenever I want to, only when I do that, everything
about me is dull and joyless, I am like other men again, a ghost
in the realm of ghosts. But when I am freed from my body and
observe it as a shadow that automatically carries out my orders
in the shadow-world it inhabits, my condition is so strange that
I do not know how to describe it.

Imagine you are sitting in a cinema, full of happiness because
of some great joy you have just experienced, and on the film you
see your own figure rushing from one sorrow to the next, collapsing at the death-bed of a woman whom you know is not
dead, but waiting at home for you; imagine you hear your own
image on the screen utter cries of grief and despair with your
own voice, produced by a machine - would you be moved by
such a film?

It is only a feeble example I can give you; I hope that one day
you will experience it. Then you will know, as I know now, that
it is possible to escape death.

The stage I have never succeeded in reaching is the great
solitude, of which my predecessor speaks. That would, perhaps,
be even more cruel for me than earthly life, if the ladder that
leads up to it should stop there; but the glorious certainty that
Eva is not dead takes me beyond it.

Even though I cannot yet see Eva, I know that after only one
more short step along the path of awakening, I will be with her,
and be with her in a much more real sense than would ever have
been possible in my earlier existence. All that separates us is a
thin wall, through which we can already sense each other. How
much deeper and calmer is my hope of finding her than in the
days when every hour I called for her. Then I was devoured with
expectancy, now I am filled with joyful confidence. There is an
invisible world which pervades the visible, and I am sure that
Eva is living there, waiting for me.

If you should suffer a like destiny and lose the one you love
on earth, then know that there is no other way of finding your
love again than by the `Path of Awakening’. Remember Chidher Green’s words to me, ‘anyone who does not learn to see on
earth will certainly not learn to do so on the other side’.

Beware of the doctrine of the spiritualists, it is a poison, it is
the most dreadful plague that has ever been visited upon
humanity. The spiritualists also claim to be able to converse
with the dead, they believe the dead come to them: they deceive
themselves. It is good that they do not know who they are that
come to them. If they knew, terror would strike them to the bone.

First you must learn to become invisible yourself, before you
can find the path that leads to the invisible ones, and learn to live
both here and on the other side, just as I have become invisible,
even to the eyes of my own body.

I have not yet reached the stage when my eyes are open to the
world beyond, and yet I know that those who were blind when
they left the world are not there; they are like melodies that fade
away and float through the cosmos until they come across
strings on which they can sound once more; where they think
they are is not a place, it is far less real than the earth, it is a dream
island of phantoms without a spatial dimension.

Only human beings who have awakened are truly immortal;
suns and gods pass, only they remain, and can accomplish
whatever they will. There is no god above them.

It is not for nothing that our path is called a heathen path. What
pious people call their god is only a state, which they could
achieve if they had the ability to believe in themselves. In their incurable blindness they create for themselves a barrier they
dare not cross; they create an image for them to worship, instead
of transforming themselves into it.

If you must pray, then pray to your invisible self; it is the only
god that answers your prayers, other gods give you stones
instead of bread.

Unhappy are they who pray to an idol and their prayers are
heard: they lose their own selves, since they are no longer
capable of believing that it was they themselves that answered
their prayers.

If your invisible self should appear within you as an essence,
you will be able to recognise it by the fact that it casts a shadow;
I did not know who I was until I saw my own body as a shadow.

A new age is dawning in which mankind will cast radiant
shadows instead of dark blemishes onto the earth, and new stars
are rising. There will be light and you, too, have your part to
play.”

Hauberrisser stood up, hurriedly rolled up the sheets of paper
and pushed them into the silver container. He had a distinct
feeling that someone was urging him to act with all haste.

The sky already bore the first signs of the coming day; the air
was leaden and made the withered grass outside look like a huge
woollen carpet with the grey waterways appearing as lighter
stripes.