"But he who truly wishes to know, must not love this phantom Nature,--must not find delight in the radiance of a clear sky,--nor in the sight of the sea,--nor in the sound of the flowing of rivers,--nor in the forms of peaks and woods and valleys,--nor in the colors of them.

"He who truly wishes to know must not find delight in contemplating the works and the deeds of men, nor in hearing their converse, nor in observing the puppet-play of their passions and of their emotions. All this is but a weaving of smoke,--a shimmering of vapors,--an impermanency,--a phantasmagory.

"For the pleasures that men term lofty or noble or sublime are but larger sensualisms, subtler falsities: venomous fair-seeming flowerings of selfishness,--all rooted in the elder slime of appetites and desires. To joy in the radiance of a cloudless day,--to see the mountains shift their tintings to the wheeling of the sun,--to watch the passing of waves, the fading of sunsets,--to find charm in the blossoming of plants or trees: all this is of the senses. Not less truly of the senses is the pleasure of observing actions called great or beautiful or heroic,--since it is one with the pleasure of imagining those things for which men miserably strive in this miserable world: brief love and fame and honor,--all of which are empty as passing foam.

Sky, sun, and sea;--the peaks, the

woods, the plains;--all splendors and forms and colors,--are spectres. The feelings and the thoughts and the acts of men,--whether deemed high or low, noble or ignoble,--all things imagined or done for any save the eternal purpose, are but dreams born of dreams and begetting hollowness. To the clear of sight, all feelings of self,--all love and hate, joy and pain, hope and regret, are alike shadows;--youth and age, beauty and horror, sweetness and foulness, are not different;--death and life are one and the same; and Space and Time exist but as the stage and the order of the perpetual Shadow-play.

"All that exists in Time must perish. To the Awakened there is no Time or Space or Change,--no night or day,--no heat or cold,--no moon or season,--no present, past, or future. Form and the names of form are alike nothingness:--Knowledge only is real; and unto whomsoever gains it, the universe becomes a ghost. But it is written:--'He who hath overcome Time in the past and the future must be of exceedingly pure understanding.'

"Such understanding is not yours. Still

to your eyes the shadow seems the substance,--and darkness, light,--and voidness, beauty. And therefore to see your former births could give you only pain."

I asked:--

"Had I found strength to look back to the beginning,--back to the verge of Time,--could I have read the Secret of the universe?"