CHAPTER V.

IN THE HIGHEST DEGREE. Five long and fateful years had rolled up the self-inflicted sacrifices of the man from Kankakee. In the remote glades of Gingalee lonely Alonzo Leffingwell has finally completed the curriculum of the fifty-seven Paths in accordance with schools of Hindustan. The Western Votary of “Meditation” had attained to the Highest Degree of “the first Discipline.” He is now descended from the inaccessible mountain upon which he received 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 it were, cut out the “Circle of Transmigration.” He is taking a vacation. And just here (as Alonzo afterward explained in Kankakee) should be made some explanation of the wide difference and distinction between the 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 in initiatory contemplation, abstraction, introspection and absorption. Oriental methods call for time without dates, and a hundred years in the achievement of Gnanum is considered excellent work. The practice of doubling or “ponying,” which obtains not merely in Illinois, but which distinguished Western scholarship generally, is unknown in India. These methods are, however, invaluable when the American seeks wisdom in the Indian schools. By thus doubling or doing extra time Alonzo Leffingwell broke the record. At first the deprivation of soap, towels and other civilized accessories appeared important. At times he yearned for a fine-tooth comb and a safety razor. However, when he had sat for six months without a change of position, and after he had held up his hands for several weeks at a stretch, he ceased to feel the need of these things. Thus he conquered the Material and attained to the first stages of Nothingness in five brief years. These years of Mounting the Spiral were, however, very trying to the Occidental Man, who had been used to the Spirit of Chicago and the Push of Illinois. His Oriental education wholly lacked the stimuli of association and competition. For months he would have no other company than his own image in the Sacred Lake by day, and his own reflection in the night time. For weeks together he heard no sounds nor had any news of outside life except the growl of a tiger or the laugh of some hyena in the mountain fastnesses. This was especially depressing to one who had been reared on the Morning and Evening editions and to whom yellow journalism was food and drink. Anything like a “Scoop” is not likely to occur in Mystic Circles in a thousand years. For a long time the life in Gingalee seemed unutterably slow. He found himself where advertising as an art had not opened up. There was nothing to “exploit” and nobody to exploit it. He found that men of his chosen profession were not expected to talk about themselves nor boast of their successes. At first this was so oppressive to the Seer from the States that he almost regretted leaving Kankakee. For, to boast of the length of one’s nails growing through the Palms would be voted exceedingly bad taste; and to exhibit satisfaction in the length of time one could meditate upon the “inspirated breath” would be set down as a weakness unworthy of a Wise Man. Alonzo Leffingwell, therefore, practiced his Western methods and took his Eastern Degrees without announcing it in Headlines. He did not even send out a circular, nor display a poster. By close application, however, he accomplished in five years what would have required fifty years for the native Hindustanee. He was now, physically speaking, quite another man. He was quite another being than was he who had fallen at the feet of Imogene Silesia Sheets that June night in Kankakee. His Physical Vehicle was now but an underlying skeleton with an overlaid sun-baked skin. For days together he sat folded up like a jack-knife, or knotted like a piece of string. He was impervious alike to heat and cold, sunshine and storm, or mosquitoes and antimires. And as for this whole physical world, though still in it, he was not of it. He was now, as far as the appetites and desires of the flesh are concerned, of no possible pleasure to himself nor to anyone else. Physically, or exoterically speaking, Alonzo Leffingwell was no more. All this, however, was but the external, physical, material view. Esoterically, or astrally speaking, our hero had achieved the supreme object of Yog, and in reality the young man had never been so much alive, so joyously youthful, so entirely free, or so recklessly gay. For it was now Alonzo Leffingwell, the astral man, who at will walked in and out of the crumpled up physical shell and levitated gaily through tangled jungle and dreary desert. It was not the body but the spirit, the ethereal man, which clove the atmosphere and hied itself away through space, quite independent of all our clumsy means of locomotion, of our ships and railways, and our foolish bikes and autos. In this superior state he became a very active member of the great body politic. He was continually on the go. He went everywhere and saw everything. Questions of salary and transportation were done. He had no baggage to check. He had no hotel bills, no tips to pay. He could no longer be snowbound nor floodtied. He traveled on schedule time. He was now equipped for any old state of matter. He was impervious to dust, dirt, noise, odors and confusion. He was now equal to Chicago. Liberated, self-supporting and self-propelling, this gay Gnani betook himself from the gloomy glades of Gingalee. He hied himself joyously over jungle and desert. He blithely skimmed the sea. He poised himself above the breakers on his native shore. His eyes were on the setting sun, his heart in Kankakee. Nothing asked he now of any man. The exactions of custom houses and the extortions of cabmen were no more. He had forever escaped the abbreviated bunk of the Pullman sleeper, and the elongated solicitude of the Pullman porter. The annual pass, once so prized by the Kankakee journalist, was now as nothing. For He-Who-Knows is a perpetual deadhead. He has solved the annoyances 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 and transportation. He has unlimited credit. He is rapid transit itself. Alonzo Leffingwell, Freshman Gnani of Gingalee, is master of the lower levels of space. He is distinctly in it. His later critics were only reverting to facts when they said that he was “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.