Ultimately it was for the best: this waiting for the enemy enabled me to concentrate my forces all the more against her and with each heartbeat I felt the hatred inside me grow, sharpening my “dragon’s eye”. Or, at least, that was what I thought!
In that night I learnt a terrible lesson and I thank fate that I learnt it in time: hate which grows beyond its object is weakened.
It was hate alone that kept me awake during that night. Just as a double dose of a drug will stimulate a flagging body, so the increase of hate kept my senses alive. But the point came when I no longer had the strength to redouble my hatred once more, and my hate began to trickle away like sand through the fingers. And my wakefulness slackened as the mists of mental exhaustion closed in and I fell into an an indescribable weariness where abstinence and lust are indistinguishable. Did Assja come to me? I did not see her!
During the last hour before daybreak I rushed wildy about the apartment. None of the arcane secrets of self-control seemed reliable enough. Wretched and humiliated, my heart racing with fear, I concentrated purely on physical movement to ward off the attacks of sleep, which was constantly trying to slip its mask over my face and to which I must not succumb before daybreak. In a desperate frenzy I ran here and there and back again, in order not to lose control over my body.
And I made it; I managed to save myself from falling defenceless into the net of my enemy.
As the first rays of the morning sun seeped pale yellow through the dusty windowpanes I collapsed in the middle of my frenetic exercise, to awake on the sofa late in the afternoon, my body still fatigued and my over-confident soul drained of all energy. I realised one can be defeated by one’s own excessive resistance.
I have three days to learn the lesson of this night; how I came by this knowledge I do not know, but an inner feeling tells me it is true.
The task once begun must be carried out to the bitter end: that was Lipotin’s instruction.
Lipotin! I spend hours thinking about him and his purposes. Was it as a friend that he gave me his eager advice and pointed me in the direction of the Tantra???
When was it that I wrote that last sentence that ends in three question marks? Where I am now there is no place for time. Men on the sun-lit planet called earth might say: it was three, four days ago. It could just as well be three or four years.
Time has no meaning for me any more, just as writing has no meaning for me. This record, which preserved the past and focused it on its goal in the eternal present of Baphomet, has fulfilled its task. Bathed in the clarity which the end has brought, I now conclude with an account of my final errors on earth:
On the third evening after my inglorious night watch, I was once more “prepared”.
Oh, how cunning I thought I was this time not to wait for the enemy in my “highly explosive armour of hatred”! With arrogant self-confidence I relied on my own will power, toughened by the exercise of Vajroli Yoga and the insights I had gained into the veiled mystery at the heart of this method. I could not yet bring everything into the clear light of consciousness, but I felt that instinct and feeling had grasped the key elements. I was concentrating on thinking of Princess Assja Shotokalungin with equanimity, even with a certain benevolence. I did not peremptorily command her; I invited her, as if to a negotiating table.
She did not come.
I kept my watch. As before, I tried to feel the lurking presence of the temptress behind the curtain of my senses. She was not there. A gentle silence lay over all three worlds.
I remained patient, for impatience, I knew, would quickly lead to hate and that was a battlefield where I could not match her.
Nothing happened. And yet I knew that this night would be decisive.
About the second hour after midnight strange thoughts and images appeared in my mind. As if my soul had become a limpid pool, I saw reflected in it Assja Shotokalungin’s terrible fate; I saw her, too, as a victim and my heart was seized with pity as the scenes succeeded each other: the cheerful hostess, full of bantering good humour, the pampered child of a princely house transformed into a morbidly sensitive young woman by a nerve-shattering flight from the clutches of the Bolshevik Cheka into the insecurity of exile. One among many, to be sure, but what a change in fortune and what fearful experiences! And in spite of it all, a brave woman who loved life; but one who also had a dark side to her character – a legacy of the Shotokalungin blood – leaving her vulnerable to demonic influences which led to her gruesome early death. She had long since atoned for any family guilt which had been passed down to her. At worst, I told myself, she was merely a medium, a victim of that fate which we men are quick to call “guilt”. A great and noble plan pulses through my veins: I will redeem her through the power of my own newly strengthened will! that must be the aim of the mysterious Vajroli Mudra: I will draw her into myself so that she will be purged of all hatred. I will not hate her, neither will I love her: with my own release I will release a suffering soul.
That was the last thought to go through my mind, for immediately after I found Assja Shotokalungin lying by me: looking up at me from the pillows of my bed was the happy, seventeen-year-old, virginal Princess from the Palace
