“ ‘Longings for a future being, filling heart and brain at death,
To the life that follows this one, will give character and breath.’ ”
“Vasitthi? thou givest me that more than human courage! Come then, let us turn our whole thoughts to the entering into existence again in the kingdom of the hundred-thousandfold Brahma.”
Scarcely had they come to this decision when a violent hurricane swept through the groves and over the lakes. Blossoms and leaves were whirled away in heaps; the beings throned on the lotus flowers cowered before the storm, and, moaning, drew their robes closer about their trembling limbs.
But like one who, all but suffocated in the close and perfume-laden atmosphere of a room, breathes deep and feels himself a new man when the fresh sea-breezes, salt-laden from the floods of the ocean, blow in through the open window, so it was with Kamanita and Vasitthi when a breath of that absolute purity came streaming towards them which they had once inhaled on the shores of the heavenly Gunga.
“Dost thou notice aught?” asked Vasitthi.
“A greeting from the Gunga. And listen, she calls,” said Kamanita.
As he spoke, the wailing death-song of the genii was silenced by the solemn, thundering sounds they both remembered.
“Good, that we already know the way,” exulted Vasitthi. “Art thou still afraid, my friend?”
“How should I fear? Come!”
And like a pair of birds that dash from the nest and fly in the teeth of the wind, so they flew thence.
All stared after them, amazed that there were still beings there who had the strength and courage necessary to flight.
But as they thus breasted the storm, there arose a whirlwind behind them which bereft everything of leaf and soul alike, and made an end of the slowly fading life of Sukhavati.
Soon they had reached the forest of palms, soon passed over it. Before them the silvery expanse of the Stream of the Universe stretched far away to the blue-black border of the heavens.
They swept out over its floods, and were instantly caught in the current of air prevailing there, and borne away with the swiftness of the tempest.
Overpowered by the speed of their flight and by the frightful crash, as it seemed of thunder mingled with the ringing of bells, their senses forsook them.
XXXVIII
In the Kingdom of the Hundred-Thousandfold Brahma
And Kamanita and Vasitthi entered again into existence in the kingdom of the hundred-thousandfold Brahma as the gods of a double star.
The luminous astral substance to which Kamanita’s spiritual essence was united symmetrically enveloped the heavenly body which was animated by his strength and guided by his will. By the exercise of his willpower the star in the first place revolved on its own axis; and this motion was his own individual life, his self-love.
Further, Kamanita was reflected in Vasitthi’s lustre, and in turn reflected hers. Exchanging rays, they circled around one common point, where their rays accumulated. This point was their mutual love; the circling was therefore their love-life. And that, in its course, they reflected one another—that was the joy of their love.
Gifted with sight on every side, each was able to look, at one and the same moment, towards every point of unending space. And everywhere they saw countless star-gods like themselves, the flashing of whose rays they caught and returned. Of these, there was, first, a number who formed with them a separate group; next, other groups which, with their own, formed a whole world-system; further, other systems which formed themselves into a chain of systems; and beyond these yet other chains, and rings of chains, and spheres of chain-rings. And Kamanita and Vasitthi now guided their binary-star in harmonious flight among the other stars and double stars of their group, as in a well-arranged roundelay, neither coming too near to their neighbours nor yet removing to too great a distance, while all the time, by a certain unspoken sympathy, informing one another of the exact direction and the just degree of motion. But at the same time, as it were, a common will was formed, which guided their whole group into the motion of the groups of their system, that then again, in turn, joined in the motion of other similar groups.
And this sympathy with the vast swaying rhythmic motion of the world-bodies, this universal and unceasing, this manifold interchange of movement—this was their relation to the universe, their outer life, their all-embracing and all-permeating charity.
That, however, which was here harmony of movement appeared to the gods of the air, who had their places beneath the star-gods, to be harmony of sound. By participation in its enjoyment, the heavenly genii, in the fields of Paradise, imitate these harmonies in their joyous melodies; and because a weak and far-off echo of these sometimes pierces to our earth—so weak that it can only be caught by the spiritual ears of the Enlightened—the seers talk mysteriously of the harmony of the spheres, and the great masters of music reproduce what they, in their ecstasy, have overheard—and this is the greatest delight of the children of men. But as the reality is to its ever dimmer-growing reflection, so is, to the rapture of human beings over notes and chords and melodies, the joy in existence of the gods of the stars. For just this is their joy of life, their joy in existence.
All these movements, however, these vast roundelays of the world-systems, had for their centre a single object—the hundred-thousandfold Brahman throned in the midst of the universe; he whose immeasurable brightness permeated all the gods of the stars, and to whom they in turn flashed back that radiance, like so many mirrors of his splendour; he whose exhaustless strength, like a never-failing spring, imparted motion to all of them, and in whom, in turn, all their motion became
