]

TO GOD[1]

_In the religious systems of mankind, I sought thee, O God, in
vain; in their machine-made dogmas and theologies, I sought thee in
vain; in their churches and temples and mosques, I sought thee long,
and long in vain; but in the Sacred Books of the World, what have I
found? A letter of thy name, O God, I have deciphered in the Vedas,
another in the Zend-Avesta, another in the Bible, another in the
Koran. Ay, even in the Book of the Royal Society and in the Records of
the Society for Psychical Research, have I found the diacritical signs
which the infant races of this Planet Earth have not yet learned to
apply to the consonants of thy name. The lisping infant races of this
Earth, when will they learn to pronounce thy name entire? Who shall
supply the Vowels which shall unite the Gutturals of the Sacred Books?
Who shall point out the dashes which compound the opposite loadstars
in the various regions of thy Heaven? On the veil of the eternal
mystery are palimpsests of which every race has deciphered a
consonant. And through the diacritical marks which the seers and
paleologists of the future shall furnish, the various dissonances in
thy name shall be reduced, for the sake of the infant races of the
Earth, to perfect harmony._--KHALID.

-----

[1] Arabic Symbol.

CHAPTER I

THE DISENTANGLEMENT OF THE ME

"Why this exaggerated sense of thine importance," Khalid asks himself
in the K. L. MS., "when a little ptomaine in thy cheese can poison the
source of thy lofty contemplations? Why this inflated conception of
thy Me, when an infusion of poppy seeds might lull it to sleep, even
to stupefaction? What avails thy logic when a little of the Mandragora
can melt the material universe into golden, unfolding infinities of
dreams? Why take thyself so seriously when a leaf of henbane, taken by
mistake in thy salad, can destroy thee? But the soul is not dependent
on health or disease. The soul is the source of both health and
disease. And life, therefore, is either a healthy or a diseased state
of the soul.

"One day, when I was rolling these questions in my mind, and working
on a reed basket to present to my friend the Hermit as a farewell
memento, his serving-monk brings me some dried figs in a blue kerchief
and says, 'My Master greets thee and prays thee come to him.' I do so
the following morning, bringing with me the finished basket, and as I
enter the Hermitage court, I find him repairing a sto