Page:Karl Gjellerup - The Pilgrim Kamanita - 1911.djvu/310

 But a time will come when morning shall dawn and a new Brahma world come into existence. If my thoughts and acts were but to be directed towards becoming the hundred-thousand-foldthousandfold [sic] Brahma whose office it will be to call the new world into existence, I do not see who would be likely to outrival me. For while all the beings of this Brahma world have sunk into helplessness and non-existence, I am here at my post, watchful, and in full possession of my faculties. Yes, I could if I so wished, at this instant, summon all those beings into life, each in his place, and begin the new world day. But one thing I could not do—I could never again call Vasitthi into being. Vasitthi has gone, in that passing away which leaves no seed of existence behind; neither god nor Brahma can find her. But what can life be to me without Vasitthi, who was its fairest and best? And what to me can a Brahma existence be, a life beyond which one is able to pass? And what the temporal, when there is an eternal?

"There is an eternal and a way to the eternal.

"An old forest Brahman once taught me that round about the heart a hundred fine arteries are spun, by means of which the soul is able to range throughout the whole body; that there is, however, but one which leads to the crown of the head—that one by which the soul leaves the body. So there are also a hundred, yes, a thousand and a hundred thousand ways which lead hither and thither in this world, through many scenes of suffering, both where the probation is of long, and where it is of short, duration, where all is beautifully appointed and where all is hatefully appointed, through divine and human worlds, through animal kingdoms and underworlds. But there is only one way which leads absolutely