CHAPTER V.
IN THE HIGHEST DEGREE.
Five long and fateful years had rolled up the self-inflictedsacrifices of the man from Kankakee.
In the remote glades of Gingalee lonely Alonzo Leffingwell has finallycompleted the curriculum of the fifty-seven Paths in accordance withschools of Hindustan.
The Western Votary of "Meditation" had attained to the Highest Degreeof "the first Discipline."
He is now descended from the inaccessible mountain upon which hereceived his education in the Lesser Attainments.
He is now released from the "Cave of the Happy Musings of Misery."
His pilgrimages, penances and prostrations are suspended.
He is temporarily absolved from the Wheel of Chance. He has, as itwere, cut out the "Circle of Transmigration." He is taking a vacation.
And just here (as Alonzo afterward explained in Kankakee) should bemade some explanation of the wide difference and distinction betweenthe mystico-theosophic-scholastic courses of Illinois and India.
In the Eastern branch TIME is the essential.
In the Western school Hustle is the key.
In the East forty to fifty years are consumed in mere preparation ininitiatory contemplation, abstraction, introspection and absorption.Oriental methods call for time without dates, and a hundred years inthe achievement of Gnanum is considered excellent work.
The practice of doubling or "ponying," which obtains not merely inIllinois, but which distinguished Western scholarship generally, isunknown in India.
These methods are, however, invaluable when the American seeks wisdomin the Indian schools. By thus doubling or doing extra time AlonzoLeffingwell broke the record.
At first the deprivation of soap, towels and other civilizedaccessories appeared important. At times he yearned for a fine-toothcomb and a safety razor. However, when he had sat for six monthswithout a change of position, and after he had held up his hands forseveral weeks at a stretch, he ceased to feel the need of thesethings.
Thus he conquered the Material and attained to the first stages ofNothingness in five brief years.
These years of Mounting the Spiral were, however, very trying to theOccidental Man, who had been used to the Spirit of Chicago and thePush of Illinois. His Oriental education wholly lacked the stimuli ofassociation and competition.
For months he would have no other company than his own image in theSacred Lake by day, and his own reflection in the night time.
For weeks together he heard no sounds nor had any news of outsidelife except the growl of a tiger or the laugh of some hyena in themountain fastnesses.
This was especially depressing to one who had been reared on theMorning and Evening editions and to whom yellow journalism was foodand drink.
Anything like a "Scoop" is not likely to occur in Mystic Circles in athousand years.
For a long time the life in Gingalee seemed unutterably slow. He foundhimself where advertising as an art had not opened up. There wasnothing to "exploit" and nobody to exploit it.
He found that men of his chosen profession were not expected to talkabout themselves nor boast of their successes. At first this was sooppressive to the Seer from the States that he almost regrettedleaving Kankakee. For, to boast of the length of one's nails growingthrough the Palms would be voted exceedingly bad taste; and to exhibitsatisfaction in the length of time one could meditate upon the"inspirated breath" would be set down as a weakness unworthy of aWise Man.
Alonzo Leffingwell, therefore, practiced his Western methods and tookhis Eastern Degrees without announcing it in Headlines. He did noteven send out a circular, nor display a poster.
By close application, however, he accomplished in five years whatwould have required fifty years for the native Hindustanee.
He was now, physically speaking, quite another man. He was quiteanother being than was he who had fallen at the feet of ImogeneSilesia Sheets that June night in Kankakee. His Physical Vehicle wasnow but an underlying skeleton with an overlaid sun-baked skin.
For days together he sat folded up like a jack-knife, or knotted likea piece of string. He was impervious alike to heat and cold, sunshineand storm, or mosquitoes and antimires. And as for this whole physicalworld, though still in it, he was not of it. He was now, as far as theappetites and desires of the flesh are concerned, of no possiblepleasure to himself nor to anyone else. Physically, or exotericallyspeaking, Alonzo Leffingwell was no more.
All this, however, was but the external, physical, material view.Esoterically, or astrally speaking, our hero had achieved the supremeobject of Yog, and in reality the young man had never been so muchalive, so joyously youthful, so entirely free, or so recklessly gay.
For it was now Alonzo Leffingwell, the astral man, who at will walkedin and out of the crumpled up physical shell and levitated gailythrough tangled jungle and dreary desert.
It was not the body but the spirit, the ethereal man, which clove theatmosphere and hied itself away through space, quite independent ofall our clumsy means of locomotion, of our ships and railways, and ourfoolish bikes and autos. In this superior state he became a veryactive member of the great body politic. He was continually on thego. He went everywhere and saw everything.
Questions of salary and transportation were done. He had no baggage tocheck. He had no hotel bills, no tips to pay. He could no longer besnowbound nor floodtied. He traveled on schedule time.
He was now equipped for any old state of matter. He was impervious todust, dirt, noise, odors and confusion. He was now equal to Chicago.
Liberated, self-supporting and self-propelling, this gay Gnani betookhimself from the gloomy glades of Gingalee. He hied himself joyouslyover jungle and desert. He blithely skimmed the sea. He poised himselfabove the breakers on his native shore. His eyes were on the settingsun, his heart in Kankakee.
Nothing asked he now of any man. The exactions of custom houses andthe extortions of cabmen were no more. He had forever escaped theabbreviated bunk of the Pullman sleeper, and the elongated solicitudeof the Pullman porter.
The annual pass, once so prized by the Kankakee journalist, was now asnothing. For He-Who-Knows is a perpetual deadhead. He has solved theannoyances of travel. Steamships and steam cars have no value to him.Transfers and trolleys trouble him no more.
HE-WHO-KNOWS has indeed solved the question of income andtransportation. He has unlimited credit. He is rapid transit itself.
Alonzo Leffingwell, Freshman Gnani of Gingalee, is master of the lowerlevels of space. He is distinctly in it.
His later critics were only reverting to facts when they said that hewas "In the air."
A Yearning Yankee Yoga, In youthful yellow Toga, Yodling sweetly all the livelong year; Yielding to the yoke of Karma, Yet so meek he would not harm a 'Squito, sitting, singing on his ear.