Page:Ossendowski - From President to Prison.djvu/220

208 I remember in greatest detail how one of my friends came to see me on visitors' day and brought me the news that everything was ready for my escape from prison and for my safe despatch to Japan. Similar proposals were presented to the prisoners from Vladivostok, Dr. Lankowski and engineer Piotrowski, and to my Harbin associate on the Board of the Union, Dr. Czaki. These efforts were made on our behalf, as there existed reason for fearing that the St. Petersburg Government would not be satisfied with simply having us serve short sentences in prison but would invent some additional and special punishment for us, as we had been the most active workers and were Poles besides. Lankowski, Piotrowski and Dr. Czaki profited by the opportunity and escaped to Japan, later going on to the Hawaiian Islands, from where Dr. Czaki went into the Argentine.

At this time I was so obsessed by the experiences which I have just described that I was afraid even to think that this unusual spiritual state might disappear, for I felt that it would have been a great loss to me. To the despair of my friends, I refused to flee. Before the score was fully settled, I had to pay a heavy price for this decision, but now I do not regret it, as it was only in this way that I earned the opportunity to see the bottomless pit of misery and the naked soul of man, which brings with it understanding, readiness to forgive and the calm of thought. After such experiences one does not say: "This is a bad man," or "This is a good man," but simply "This is a man carried along by a bad, or a good, current of life."

Unconsciously and without having yet read or heard the wisdom of Buddha Gautama, I arrived at the same