The True Gospel of Chrishna-Jeseus
Section 2 — Spiritual Heritage
20 — The Chapter of the Evil Dream
A-UM !
1. And it came to pass that Arjuna, the belovèd Disciple, dreamed a dream, very strange and perplexing; a dream of the past, present, and the future: for dreams are not confined to time and space.
2. For in his dream he found himself in a desolate region, full of wrecked temples, and palaces, and great houses of the erstwhile rich, and smaller ones of the poor, surrounded by huge, red-tiled but broken walls of a once large and mighty city.
3. Stark walls stood here and there, remains of once palatial homes; and at their base lay ruins, and broken statues of the gods.
4. And forlorn multitudes rushed to and fro, aimlessly, seeking they knew not what, and muttering together in small groups, with anxious faces.
5. And children cried for sustenance at helpless mothers, whose breasts were dry and slack, for they themselves were famished.
6. And so there was a continual coming and going of miserable folks, dumb with suffering, with staring eyes, dragging their feet, but never reaching anywhere.
7. A dull red sun, of copper hue and lurid, but very hot, hung in the sky; no pleasant blue that sky, but drab and shabby. And now and then a sudden cloud appeared, bursting hastily and drenching all with ice-cold rain.
8. And just as sudden did the weather change, and the people, shivering in their bits of ruined shelter, rushed out again, to dry themselves in that unpleasant sun.
9. And as Arjuna wandered through that city, at certain places he saw crowds of workmen, slaving, pulling down ruins, rebuilding them with aching limbs, under the threat of the lash of the overseer.
10. But no sooner had they done their task, than others came and razed the new-built edifices to the ground again, smashing and hammering with huge mallets at the cement and the great girders, leaving heaps of rubble, and no reward.
11. And Arjuna reached a quarter of the city which had escaped disaster; and there he saw, and beheld vast crowds within the offices and bazaars;
12. Making things of little use, and selling them to buyers who forgot their purchases as soon as they acquired them.
13. Gloating for a moment on their treasures, then putting down their wares—looking for something else, to forget that again when their eagerness was satisfied.
14. And there were banks and counting houses, with clerklings writing busily in fat volumes, taking money out of sacks and putting it back again; to count once more, replacing the gold and silver, and so on without end;
15. Opening and shutting strong coffers, very stoutly built and banded with steel bands, ever on the watch for possible robbers or cheats; reading many books with long columns of intricate figures, adding to them or subtracting; and no sooner had they read the books than was it all forgotten.
16. And as they wrote within their ledgers, great drops of sweat rolled from their brows, running over the pages and making unreadable that which they had entered with so much labour.
17. The crowds were chattering like so many monkeys in a tiger-haunted forest: buying, selling, buying, selling, but never getting any richer anyhow, except a few who hid their hoards, and faded away, for they could not die, where there was nothing to live or die for at any time.
18. Some of the crowd were listening to priests whose words were void of meaning; or hearing the tenets of riff-raff teachers who had nothing to pass on;
19. Or watching artists painting pictures which would shame a child of four; grinning inanely at sculptors hewing monstrous sculptures, huge and nauseating, of females with gigantic, ill-formed breasts and buttocks, heavy-thighed and demon-faced, to be admired by brainless hordes;
20. Reading poetry and prose by unsexed poetasters; words without the slightest meaning; jumbles of words and stupid phrases, escaping from their lunatic minds, applauded by moronic fools who saw in this the new culture of the art of letters.
21. Behold the slobbering gutter poets, peering from their manholes, spewing sewer doggerel their bellies can no more retain;
22. And furtive scribblers in moth-eaten garrets, gnawing the crust of disinspirational despondency and spitting crumbs of idiocy at their grubby pages.
23. A dreadful strain lined all the faces of those busy people; hoping in vain for the day when their work should be done and they could live in ease and plenty.
24. Running, rushing, swearing, leering; streams of idleness; herding, crowding of waifs and estrays, scattering, clustering in routs and rabbles, mobs and presses; getting nowhere except out of breath, jostling, pushing, sneering, fighting:
25. Trousered women, gambling men; slouching youths and insolent maidens; yelling children, not controlled; strikers, upstarts, brigands, robbers; pilferers, sneak-thieves mocking law and order; ribald cries and bawdy gestures, despots of the lowest kind,
26. Irresponsible, and no-one to enforce the constitution firmly, but governed by officials like offal themselves, pandering to the lowly mob.
27. Thus Arjuna saw the multitudes in that part of the ruined city, utterly astonished and perplexed.
28. The only comfort of those people could be the grave, he thought, but this they dreaded with an overwhelming fear; for none could say what lay beyond the Gate of Death, mysterious and dark, for no-one could remember, though all had passed through the grim portals: but they knew it not.
29. And the more Arjuna went to and fro within that darksome city, the more he wondered at the ugliness and despair of all around him in that dream.
30. For here there was no comeliness of face or figure, but all looked drab and slovenly, even the young, of whom even the best-featured had their looks for only a day or so;
31. An evanescent gleam of that which might have been. And it seemed to him that Arjuna spent many centuries within that city, and all things stayed the same, incarnation after incarnation as it were.
32. And when Arjuna awoke from this weirdsome dream, he wondered so much that one day he felt compelled to ask the Master what it meant.
33. And Chrishna beheld his Pupil, smilingly, and asked a question in return:
34. 'Were any of these people quite aware of all this ugliness and misery, or, being accustomed to it all their lives, did the true significance of it escape their notice?'
35. 'No', replied the Disciple, 'they seemed quite used to it, and some there were who even seemed to like those horrors, being eager to remain within that City for evermore: if only they might escape from death'.
36. 'Now', answered Chrishna, 'do you consider that here on earth all things are better than in that City of your dream?
37. 'Are the people here more beautiful, enjoying their occupations, whatever they be, buying and selling, being born, loving, marrying, begetting offspring, acquiring riches if they can, looking forward to a heavenly reward for a life well spent?'
38. 'Oh, yes', replied Arjuna, 'things are better ordered here on earth, and many people enjoy their lives, even the poorest, who know no better, also having comforts of their own of which the rich cannot even dream;
39. 'And they are much happier than the people of my dream....except for that 'final reward'; for no-one, even here, wants to die if he can avoid it, except a few who can bear the blows of their destiny no longer'.
40. 'This being so', said Chrishna, 'would you consider for a moment what would be the true thoughts of a dweller in Heaven, where all is glory, and bliss, and utter happiness and beauty, where there are no blows of shattering Fate,
41. 'If he dreamed a dream in which he came to earth; beholding the eternal fight for life among the lower orders and the higher;
42. 'Witnessing on this earth the greed of rapacious men; the treachery of the unscrupulous; the sloth of the lazy; the cruelty of the fierce; the endless wars, and rapines, and slaughter of the innocent;
43. 'The brutal ignorance of lowly men—resenting any ray of light that aught might lighten up their unevolved, raw minds;
44. 'The ruined cities in the wilderness and jungles, where once bloomed mighty nations, now forgotten; the storms, the wrecks, the inundations;
45. 'Sickness and pain; loss of youth after a few short years of thoughtless play and passion;
46. 'Age that wrecks the body of the strongest, when all those whom we loved in youth are gone and we are lonesome and forgotten;
47. 'Would such an Angel, residing in a Clime where things like these are not, admire the things which men on earth find so desirable?'
48. Arjuna hung his head, and made no answer.
49. 'Therefore', concluded Chrishna, 'Your dream was an illumination, in which you saw an even lower realm than that of earth—so that you might behold that future which awaits inferior men,
50. 'Who in material things find their delight; not knowing there are better things of the spirit for the man who knows within his Mind there is a Place of Light, treasuring that world of men no more than a withered leaf, or blade of grass of last year's mowing.'
51. And Arjuna bowed low before the Lord, saying, 'As Bindu, Nâda and Kalâ are the subtle aspects of the Mystic Syllable, even A—UM,
52. 'So are thy words full of subtleness, beloved Master, causing the Light of the higher intellect to flame up in secret splendour.
53. 'We adore thee, who art the Fragrant-bodied One, the promoter of Prosperity, by whose Being we are freed from death,
54. 'Even as the ripe plum from its stalk. That we may dwell in eternal Life—beyond the darkness of the lower abodes—and partake of the blessings of Immortality, together with those Dwellers in Heaven who behold this world with pity in their eyes.'
Next: 21 — The Chapter of The Initiate
This e-text facsimile of The Book of Sa-Heti was published on 5 August 2012.
© Copyright 2012 J Michaud PhD & occult-mysteries.org. Last updated 28 March 2017.
