“We call them our Lights,” they said.

“It is true,” I observed, “that I saw lights in the air about the room, but they went out instantaneously, and left only smoke behind them.  And why do they write backwards?  Who are They?”

As I asked this last question, the pencil on the table rose again, and wrote thus on the paper:—­

“.ksatonoD”

Again horror seized on me, and the air becoming full of smoke I found it impossible to breathe.  “Let me out!” I cried, “I am stifled here,—­the air is full of smoke!”

“Outside,” the people of the house answered, “you will lose your way; it is quite dark, and we have no other rooms to let.  And, besides, it is the same in all the other apartments of the inn.”

“But the place is haunted!” I cried; and I pushed past them, and burst out of the house.

Before the doorway stood a tall veiled figure, like translucent silver.  A sense of reverence overcame me.  The night was balmy, and bright almost as day with resplendent starlight.  The stars seemed to lean out of heaven; they looked down on me like living eyes, full of a strange immeasurable sympathy.  I crossed the threshold, and stood in the open plain, breathing with rapture and relief the pure warm air of that delicious night.  How restful, calm, and glorious was the dark landscape, outlined in purple against the luminous sky!  And what a consciousness of vastness and immensity above and around me!  “Where am I?” I cried.  The silver figure stood beside me, and lifted its veil.  It was Pallas Athena.

“Under the Stars of the East,” she answered me, “the true eternal Lights of the World.”

After I was awake, a text in the Gospels was vividly brought to my mind:—­“There was no room for then in the Inn.”  What is this Inn, I wondered, all the rooms of which are haunted, and in which the Christ cannot be born?  And this open country under the eastern night,—­is it not the same in which they were “abiding,” to whom that Birth was first angelically announced?

—­Atcham, Nov. 5, 1885

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** The solution of the enigma was afterwards recognised in an 
instruction, also imparted in sleep, in which it was said, “If 
Occultism were all, and held the key of heaven, there would be no 
need of Christ.”  (Ed.)

XXII.  An Eastern Apologue

The following was read by me during sleep, in an old book printed in archaic type.  As with many other things similarly read by me, I do not know whether it is to be found in any book:—­

“After Buddha had been ten years in retirement, certain sages sent their disciples to him, asking him,—­’What dost thou claim to be, Gotama?’

“Buddha answered them, ‘I claim to be nothing.’

“Ten years afterwards they sent again to him, asking the same question, and again Buddha answered:—­’I claim to be nothing.’