Observations placeholder

Rudyard Kipling – extract from Kim

I drank no water.  Still I saw not the Way.  They pressed food upon me and cried at my shut door.  So I removed myself to a hollow under a tree.  I took no food.  I took no water.  I sat in meditation two days and two nights, abstracting my mind; in breathing and out breathing in the required manner... Upon the second night – so great was my reward – the wise Soul loosed itself from the silly body and went free.  This I have never before attained, though I have stood on the threshold of it.  Consider, for it is a marvel...

Yea, my soul went free, and wheeling like an eagle, saw indeed that there was no Teshoo Lama nor any other soul.  As a drop draws to water, so my soul drew near to the great soul which is beyond all things.  At that point exalted in contemplation, I saw all Hind [India] from Ceylon in the sea to the Hills, and my own painted rocks at Such-zen; I saw every camp and village, to the least, where we have ever rested.  I saw them at one time and in one place; for they were within the soul.  By this I knew the soul had passed beyond the illusion of Time and Space and of Things.  By this I knew I was free.  ….......

Then my soul was all alone and I saw nothing, for I was all things, having reached the great Soul.  And I meditated a thousand years, passionless, well aware of the Causes of all Things..

Then a voice cried 'What shall come to the boy if thou art dead?' and I was shaken back and forth in myself with pity for thee; and I said 'I will return to my chela, lest he miss the Way'.  Upon this my soul, which is the soul of Teshoo Lama, withdrew itself from the great Soul with strivings and yearnings and retchings and agonies not to be told.  As the egg from the fish, as the fish from the water, as the water from the cloud, as the cloud from the thick air, so put forth, so leaped out, so drew away, so fumed up the soul of Teshoo Lama from the Great Soul