Chapter XIX
OF NEFA AND OF HAICHE — OF DEVO AND OF HIS TRICKS — OF THE ENTRANCE OF ZOY INTO THE AURA OF THE PRIME EMANATION
I
The race of the two beings brought by Tihpheres increased and multiplied and their perfecting went hand in hand with their growth. Thanks to their marvellous faculties of assimilation and imitation, they modeled the ones around them; they loved and honoured Kahi and Kahie: The latter had taken charge of their education, this education which consists in developing the dominant capacities and individual aptitudes; by their vigor and by the very strength of their growth, all that was useless or harmful in them was rejected or suppressed just as wild grasses are choked by developing wheat. They assimilated themselves to the Formations of Kahi, resembling them more and more in form and character. They rendered great services to the most sensitive of these Formations since, having never known more favourable conditions, they were satisfied with their surrounding, and being from earth by nature, they took pleasure in using and improving everything that was susceptible of being used and improved. It was not that energy or desire were lacking for Kahi and Kahie or for their Formations, but since the sustenance and the means of sustentation were insufficient for them, their mentality absorbed everything that was necessary to the vigor of their vitality.
At a certain epoch, a beautiful passive child was born to the race of those of the First Emanated. Sympathy was acute between this Passive and Kahie.
One day a descendant of Chi said to Kahi:
“My desire is to take for wife Haiche who is with Kahie as she is very beautiful and very intelligent; it is as if she is from our family.”
Kahi repeated these words to Kahie.
— “It is true that Haiche is beautiful and intelligent,” she said; “nonetheless, she is not of us and no one of our race has taken in duality of being someone who is not.”
The young man whose name was Nadell replied softly:
— “Can the earth give us the force we lack? For the very vigour of our race, it seems good to me that the Formations of the First and Second Emanation of the Attribute of the Cosmic Cause become one: Some can sustain themselves where the others can not, and what is for one wholesome and even pleasant is for the other unpleasant and debilitating. Wise is the one who knows how to adapt to circumstances so that circumstances may adapt to him.”
— “No one has the right to interfere in the duality of being since without pathotism, there is no duality,” replied Kahie.
In the evening, as Nefa was strolling on the edges of the great river, meditating on the present and the past, he heard a slight noise, the footstep of someone following him; turning around he found himself facing Haiche.
— “Welcome,” he told her; “but why have you followed me?”
— “Kahie and Kahie related to me your words. If they are the exact expression of your thought, you are to me like Tihpheres is to Tzere.”
And Haiche did not return to Kahi and Kahie.
— “Now the two Formations are united,” said Kahie to Kahie; “they will be as one against that which is hostile.”
— “Thinking of this union, I smile and I cry,” replied Kahie.
The Emanations of Barashino, the latter materializing them as he had materialized himself, took in duality of being the Passives they had saved from the waters while in the forms of the active Beings they had taken over. Their race also multiplied itself and progressed.
II
After the rest of assimilation, Devo waking to activity remembered the horror he had inspired in Zoy; looking around at those awaiting his orders, he asked himself:
— “Am I really as ugly as these others?”
And speaking to one of his prime Formations:
— “Does my exterior form resemble yours in all points?”
And the chief replied:
— “Yes, it is so:; the form you have taken on is even of the most inferior kind.
— “How this form disgusts me!” he cried out.
— “And us then!” answered the Formations.
Devo noticed that his Formations showed an ever more marked disgust for the women of the woods, whereas the latter, on the contrary, felt themselves more and more attracted to them.
— “This state of imbalance of the active and passive will certainly draw to us some great calamity,” he thought. “The present state of things is worse that before; I see no way to carry out my project to grow and multiply myself upon the earth.”
He assembled all of his Formations and told them:
“These bodies are not only repugnant but useless since you can not stand the passives with a similar form. Unite therefore your will and desire with mine so that I may free myself from this form, without suffering and without danger to the most rarefied states of being with which it has assimilated itself during rest. Once free, I will free you in turn.”
The beings turned around Devo concentrating in focus their will and their desire upon his, and soon, the held form fell to the ground. Then they cried out:
— “Now free us too, as per your promise.”
But they received no answer. Furious and terrified, they tried by all possible means to free themselves, but without success. The most evolved consulted each other and resolved to go find Barashino, to implore his aid since his power and occult knowledge were very great.
While approaching the island, they noticed that it was veiled as before and hidden by a dense silvery mist that extended far onto the waters; despite all of their efforts, they could not penetrate it. They came back weary and discouraged.
III
As the chief to whom Devo had spoken with such perfidy was approaching the shore, a little cloud descended above him; he was surprised by this.
At night, while he was sleeping, weary and troubled, he saw that the cloud was still above him, and he then mentally perceived these words:
— “You are in a great predicament; Devo has deceived you; he is free but he has abandoned you in these forms that imprison you and repulse you. In memory of his solicitude for you, he has grown in the middle of your foreheads this protuberance similar to a horn, which makes you even more hideous.”
— “Were you sent by Devo to mock us in our sorrow?” replied the leader,
— “This could not be farther in my thought,” replied the voice; “I am what remains of Zoy, Zoy who, because of the horror his form inspired in her, was disintegrated by Devo, as much as it was possible for him to do so. But he was not careful enough to prevent this more or less perfect re-formation which in natural for that which has recently been separated by force.
— “You are also crafty in the art of concealment and of ruse,” answered the chief; “we know quite well that it is for the love of yourself, and not for any solicitude with us, that you have placed yourself in rapport with us who are clothed with these bodies that repulse you.”
— “You have spoken correctly. There is nothing outside of my self; and so, how can anything matter if it does not exist for oneself? From Brah-Elohim to you, and the difference between the two of you is not small, from you to the simple living cell, self preservation is the driving force of all beings.”
— “It is true; the First Emanated might have had for motive the preservation of the feasible concept by which universal well-being is obtained.”
— “Our motivation is self preservation by all means; you know that the loss of the material states would be the annihilation of our individuality. The motive of the dual cell is a simple instinct which consists in drawing from its environment the food necessary to its preservation; it is by this that was formed the orifice into which it attracts its food.”
“This instinct can grow but, in all beings, the driving force always remains the same, namely: the self preservation.”
— “Brah self-sacrificed by spilling himself into matter,” retorted the leader.
— “Is Brah the only being to have sacrificed himself for the realisation of his idea or who has sacrificed his personality for an ideal?”
And as the chief was not answering:
— “During your mass crossing upon the deep waters, I pulled from your activity the duality of being sufficient to partially re-assume my form in this little cloud and to put myself in rapport with you. My desire is now to re-assume my form by means of your activity.”
— “But the form into which I am imprisoned is horrible!” replied the chief.
— “Circumstances change things. One who has good wine disdains pure water; one who is dying of thirst welcomes brackish water as an elixir of life.”
— “And my benefit in this union?” asked the leader.
— “Instead of the other forms that repulse you, you will have a beautiful and powerful passive. Besides, our power to materialise our conceptions depends upon our unity.”
— “Let it then be done as you desire.”
— “Allow me to rest with this cloud in your aura.”
— “You may do so.”
Zoy thus gradually re-assumed, as within a sphere of sustentation, the being which Devo had divided. She was clothed as before until she arrived at that degree of density of the nervous body which is closest to the Physical State.
— “I beg you,” she said; “help me now so that I may assume three degrees of the Physical State, the Mental, the Psychic and the Nervous.”
— “How can I help you?”
— “Concentrate your conceptional thought upon the form which is your ideal of beauty” she replied; “unite your will and your desire until your conception is materialised…”
He did thus.
Zoy then appeared in his aura, but she resembled in no way that form which, in the distant past, Lhamkhial had made for himself.
— “Now,” she said, “I see you not in the hideous form that imprisons you, but under your veritable aspect, full of force, of savage and fierce vigor, beautiful from a strange and seductive beauty.”
— “And I, in this state, see my ideal; you fulfil all that I have conceived as bewitching, fascinating and subjugating.”
— “Let us go down to the immobile waters so that I may see what kind of form you have conceived and materialized,” she said.
In the light emanated from the dwelling of Kaoah, they went to the edge of a great lake in the forest. Zoy, looking at her image, saw an exquisite form, supple and small, whose black and lustrous hair was falling to the heels, whose oval face, of a olive-greenish complexion, was illuminated with two clear eyes shining like stars, but capable nonetheless of a soft expression, veiled with black eyelashes falling upon the delicately pink cheeks. The mouth, well arched, denoted an energetic will; and when she smiled to herself, the coral lips, slightly parted, uncovered fine teeth similar to a row of pearls.
— “I am happy!” she exclaimed joyously; “no one will recognise in this enthralling form the being so beautiful and so strong that Lhamkhial had formed. With my will, my knowledge, my experience of life and my insatiable desires, what will I not be able to accomplish? I no longer want to be known by the name of Zoy but by that of Sheba-el-ma, as I am from the distant past and my power comes to me from the waters where I looked at myself for the first time while returning to individual life.”
— “We will rest here,” said the chief; “here you will materialise yourself into the fourth Degree of the Physical State, so that we can be one in every way.”
— “No,” answered Sheba. “Do you imagine that I, who am accustomed to Lhamkhial, to the formation of Kahi, and to the sombre and savage beauty of Devo can stand a form like yours?”
— “It is of the utmost necessity that you materialise yourself; otherwise you are of no use.”
— “You have helped me to reconstitute myself,” said Sheba laughing, “not out of solicitude for me but for your own gain? Well then, I wanted to reconstitute myself for only one purpose, and this purpose is my own self.”
That being said, she jumped into the waters and, as he was pursuing her, she cried out while reaching the depth of the lake:
“You will be called Zelbaht because you have been duped.”
And then she disappeared, and he could not determine if she had plunged into or if she had merged with the waters.
He returned to his dwelling saying:
“It is not Zelbaht but Zelabhi that I want to be called, because Devo taught me the art of deceit and I will from now on live not to be deceived but to deceive…”
At that moment something cold touched his left foot; he looked and saw that it was a little stream which had formed from a flooding of the lake. He bathed in it his hands and feet, refreshed in it his burning head, and seeing his limbs brown and covered with dark hairs he murmured: “And it is a Formation of the race of Kahi that duped me thus! But I and my own will appear to him under hideous and terrifying forms as long as we can sustain ourselves on the earth, even if we were to exteriorise ourselves or escape this form.”
Then, lifting his hands towards the North, he cried out: “Be witness, O First Emanated of Kahi, that by the doings of your own Formation, I have washed my hands, feet and head with the water of the betrayal she has brought beneath my steps!”
spiritus93 