A COLLECTING DAY ABOVE AROLLA 85 



terrible a thing for little mundane man. In the high 

 valleys of the Alps, where the silence is so vast that 

 it seems as if a single uttered word would shatter the 

 roof of the world, the nearness of the Gods is either 

 purifying or appalling, according to one's strength of 

 mood. All the Lords of Life and Death, all Gods and 

 Saints, all Buddhas and Bodhisattas out of the infinite past 

 and the infinite future, they are all there, making part of 

 that immeasurable beauty, chanting in the choir of that 

 eternal silence, incarnate in the radiance of that un- 

 stained mountain sunlight. They are the irresistible 

 Powers of the air ; the lucid diamond air is them. So 

 that, if one be strong enough, from hours of solitude in 

 upmost Alps, one can drink big draughts of immortality, 

 can leave behind for a wholesome hour the unrealities of 

 earthly life, and lose consciousness of the phantom daily 

 self in reunion with the divine eternal Self. 



However, if such a mood be not upon you, be careful 

 how you venture into the mountains. Be careful how 

 you go there accompanied by unworthy thoughts, petty 

 ambitions, hopes and fears. For the pure Spirits of the 

 hills are not patient of such ajffronts, and they will have 

 none of such thoughts in their presence, nor of you that 

 bring them. You will be unhappy in such august 

 neighbourhood — feel ill-attuned, unwanted, disliked. In 

 such a mood, or when weakness and the love of human 

 comradeship is upon one, let us stay happily at the 

 Schweizerhof, or parade the streets of Zermatt. For the 

 terror of the hills is dreadful, cold, annihilating. It 

 strips man of his dignity, denies his existence, reduces 

 him to an ineffectual ghost, a mere a/iavpov eihw~Kov of his 

 decent Bond Street entity. On level lawns in the Alps I 

 have felt a spiritual terror so glacial and overpowering 

 that I have scarcely been alSff-M pWSf^ ©3i#Wfeg foot 

 before the other. N6tpfe^E^&oftln^'iBlP^ieHJM 



BEPAi^TMENT OF FLORIGULT^ii^E 



AND 



ORHAtENTAL IDfiTI3DLT"^E 



